


The Bin and the Badge (FFoZ S1 E7)

by J_Shute



Series: The Fantastic Foxes of Zootopia [10]
Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Anger, Conspiracy Theories, Delusions, Doctor/Patient, Mental Institutions, dual viewpoints
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-11-02 13:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 24,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20757248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Shute/pseuds/J_Shute
Summary: Dr Amy Lupuleli, long term psychiatrist in Zootopia, finds herself tackling a highly unusual case, that of one 'Honey Badger'. Met with an angry Ratel who believes the world is being controlled by sheep, and only she can stop them, can she convince her patient that something is wrong with her and treatment is worthwhile?Or is a mammal who believes that an entire species is pure evil just an irredeemable monster, no better than any other speciesist.Amy must tackle these, and the morals of involuntary commitment, while Honey Badger tackles with the fact that the sheep have got her, and that if she doesn't survive there will be nothing to stop them taking over the world.(Episode 7 of Fantastic Foxes of Zootopia, but reading of prior works is not required)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For those just joining us, this is episode 7 of Fantastic Foxes of Zootopia, series 1. It also doesn't need any prior reading of the series to understand (probably the last fic where this counts). To help though, let me share two simple facts.
> 
> Dr Amy Lupuleli is a therapist who's helped Nick and others in the past, and that the city is on high alert following a discovery of nighthowler thefts.

**FFoZ S1E7** (**The Bin and the Badge.)**

**.**

**.**

**AN: Welcome back everyone. I've been travelling through France and Belgium these last few days, and had great fun meeting up with both the members of Zieg's server group and, even better, the great Cimar himself. It was a very fun short break, we were able to see the sights, enjoy good food, and bounce ideas between ourselves. Cimar's upcoming fic is continually sounding better and better, and I'll be sure to give it a shout out when it's released.**

**Another shout out I'd like to give is for the fic L'EDgendary, which some of you may have seen on the Zootopia A03 server. I decided to check it out, given the lack of comments, and found an amazingly written crossover featuring a stunning take on Robin Hood, Little John… -and the Ed, Edd and Eddy crew (all of them in Disney/furry form).**

**Seriously, this fic deserves far more love and attention than what it's got.**

**But back to my work, and I'm pleased to publish a long teased episode, indeed being the one with Amy mentioned all the way back at the end of 'Different.' One other notable thing about it is that, on A03, it is the first fic billed solely as a Zootopia fic. No crossovers! Not that there won't be lots of crossovering cameo's, he-he-he… I wonder if you guys can find them.**

**Also feel free to checkout the brilliantly funny artwork done by Giftheck, up on the A03 version.**

**Originally three chapter long, I've split each one in two and will release them bi-weekly instead. So, shorter waits, hip-hip horray.**

**Anyhow, on with the show!**

**.**

**.**

**.**

**Chapter 1**

**.**

Dr Amy Lupuleli sat in her office, noting things down as her patient talked. The reports were all pretty consistent, as they always were for him, much to her disappointment. It was a sad case of affairs for this horse. It was always one hoof forwards, one hoof back, and all she'd been able to do in their long years of practice was to keep his head above the water.

Then again, for some mammals who'd been through terrible things like this one had, who'd seen things then been used and abandoned as he had, who'd then heard of the terror he'd missed, but had struck so many of his friends...

Sometimes, keeping their head out of the water was all you could do.

The really sad thing was that he was such a sweetie, which was the tragic root of all his problems.

"I mean, then three more turned up," he carried on, talking about homeless mammals. In an act of charity, he'd seen a homeless mammal and given him a generous donation. He'd then come back again, and the same donation was provided. Then he began bringing his friends, which meant more money had to be given. "I had to give more, didn't I?" He asked, before shaking his head. "It was unfair on the newcomers, and they were all in a rough way, they didn't have homes or such. It was a slow week, so I had to cut into my food bill; after all, I was still better fed than them. I had a roof over my head, whereas they needed to raise money for a shelter and…"

Amy's ears perked up. "Money for the shelter?"

"Yes, money to get into the homeless shelter. They…"

"Mr Boxmoor," she said, leaning in as she used his full surname. She put her paw on his hoof, holding it to steady him before she told him the truth. "None of the city shelters charge for entry. They were lying to you; taking advantage of you."

He paused, his ears going back, before he looked away in shame. "There were probably other things they needed it for."

"Most likely…"

"-Things they needed more than I did," he said, his voice raised. It seemed aggressive, but Amy could tell it was actually defensive. She was striking closer to the truth, and that was cutting painfully for him. Striking at the heart of his issues, making him put his guard up and shy away from those trying to help, so he could keep the narrative he clung to like a raft safe. This was the point where she had to make him uncomfortable, to push through to the core of the issue.

"Like drugs?" she asked. "Or alcohol? Or cigarettes?" It was a bit of a petty move and she knew it. Things were far more complicated. However, in cases like this she had to use her big stick first. The soft talking could come after. "I've had experience with these kind of mammals before. If you, or I, were made homeless, forced out onto the streets, we could find a shelter, get a room, start a job and save enough for a rental deposit and then, in three months or less, we'd be back on our feet. At the very worst, we might spend one day, maybe two without a roof over our heads. Those mammals out there need help, yes, but not money. They need psychiatric help more often than not, help that you can't provide them. That money you were giving them wasn't helping them, it was enabling them."

Another half-truth. It wouldn't have helped them. It wouldn't have harmed them either. The repeat homeless mammals she'd met were an odd mix. Prideful, stubborn, self-hating, paranoid or just without the skills or faculties to live normally. Many would put up the exact same barriers that her patient did when help came. She cringed slightly, as the only way to help many of them would be to straight-up yank them off the street. Sober them up by force, shove treatment down their throats, and try and get them into a state where they could live by themselves.

It was a terrible balance she had to deal with; one without a definite answer. In general, the city was happy with mammals living in their own self-enforced squalor, putting their freedom to live in misery over the ability to force them into a better life. But was it the right choice?

Amy's duty was to care for and cure mammals, and also to effectively imprison them without their consent, so this paradox continually weighed heavily on her mind.

Thankfully, with Mr Boxmoor, she knew the answer.

"When you go home," she said, "tell them that you'll be taking them to a nearby shelter. Offer them a lift. You could even give them information about some of the care we give. Then…"

"Then I could volunteer there," he said, a feeling of strength rising in his voice. She saw it in his body too as he rose up.

Amy's ears went back in concern. "You don't have to."

"I have the time," he said. "In my budget."

She relaxed slightly. It was a very early exercise they'd done, and the most successful. Set a weekly budget for how much time and money he could donate, how many hours he could volunteer, and how much he had to spend on himself. Most of the time he succeeded, though these homeless mammals had pushed him over. "Just stick to it," she told him. "You come first. You have to look after yourself first if you're going to look after others." There was a pause. A smile. "Making yourself weaker helps no-one. If you're as strong as I know you can be first, it's better for everyone."

He sighed, before nodding. "I'll try, I'll work harder on it. Thanks, doc."

"You're welcome," she said, smiling. Progress, it seemed. "Hopefully things will work out peacefully, though there is a small chance that they might turn violent." She paused, before fishing out a very popular brand of recording pens, in particular the rather famous carrot model, and passed it to him. "It might be worth having this on and recording everything. If you feel the least bit threatened by any of them, I want you to walk away. If they keep it up, call the police or defend yourself. Whatever you do, you cannot let them rule over you."

He seemed a bit tense, but nodded. He was nervous, but he felt like he could do it. They'd be meeting up next week, same time, same place, and she looked forwards to seeing his progress. So, she let him go and wrote up her notes.

As she finished there was a tap on her door.

A wolf security guard was on the other side, fully armed with restraints and a tranquilizer gun. That was nothing out of the ordinary.

What was though were the numerous bruises and cuts on his face.

"Oh gosh. Are you alright?

"I can handle it," he said gruffly.

"What happened?"

"Our new guest happened," he snorted, his lacerated muzzle grimacing up, only for him to wince down from a sudden flash of pain. "I've had my fair share of angry mammals, but this one is something else!" he barked. "I got off lightly, apparently the officers who brought her in from her residence _didn't_."

Amy nodded, opening up her desk. "Do you want treatment, medical help?"

He huffed. "I'd like you to get down to her so we can get this over with. This one doesn't have an official diagnosis yet, so we can only keep her for two days or so."

"Forty-eight hours," Amy clarified, suddenly pretty sure she knew who he was talking about. "Of course, the assumption is that in that time we diagnose them and if need be take an emergency petition to a judge to get a longer-term hold. She's a ratel, correct?"

"Yeah," he agreed. "She's newly sectioned and in in the max-security padded cells."

Amy was taken aback. Those cells were hardly ever used, with only one permanent resident. She knew that the patient would certainly put up a fight when picked up, but just how much fight did she have in her? Shaking it off, she nodded, gathering her folders before going with him. She knew exactly who the wolf was talking about, given that she'd been in charge of assessing the notes and reports first presented to the hospital. She'd been the point of call for the raiser of the concerns, collating the evidence before handing it over to the appropriate judge with her recommendations. Recommendations which had just been fulfilled.

This was going to be a rather unusual case, with a rather unusual mammal, and one where she feared that the security guard's equipment and the severe provisions might just be necessary.

Still, though, that question rattled around in her mind. Was taking away this mammal's freedom the right choice?

Ask any mammal off the street, and given the context she was sure they'd say yes.

Still, could you ever be entirely certain?

She guessed that she'd soon see for herself.

.

.

The prisoner couldn't help but struggle.

How long had it been?

Alone…

In this cell.

What did they want from her? What were they going to do?

She knew exactly why she was here and who it was who'd _really_ taken her in.

Who'd locked her up.

She'd tried to resist when they came for her, tried to fight, only to be tranquilised. After a dreamless sleep she'd woken up again, strapped to a gurney as they took her into this place. Straps holding her down, white tiled ceiling panels and fluorescent lights rolling past, she'd tried to move her paws only to find that one was pawcuffed to the bed.

As if that was going to stop her.

They hadn't expected her to succeed in freeing herself. Their mistake. She would have made it if the sore losers hadn't struck again, this time shooting a taser into her gut.

She flinched at the painful memory, though thankfully it was a blurry one.

She just about remembered getting injected with something before waking up here, where she'd been for the last who knows how long. Stuck in this damn padded cell with this damn straight jacket on. They were really being stereotypical there, weren't they? Suiting her up so she couldn't cause mischief, or fight back.

Mainly fight back.

As if they thought she wouldn't fight back, not when her freedom was on the line. Not when the fight against tyranny was on the line! They probably expected minor resistance, but she had no qualms about using her teeth and claws. On the other hand, that was probably why there was now a police muzzle strapped to her face.

There was no chin strap to it though, so…

A sound outside pricked her ears and she froze. Her eyes on the door, she tried to see if there was any movement at all behind it. Scanning for any hint of a moving shadow in the cracks, or maybe a slight change in the view point, she waited…

And waited…

Before sighing. It was all clear. Down on her knees, her bottom half covered by a simple grey tracksuit, she leant forwards and lay on the ground, trying to pull off the damned muzzle. She smiled, chuckling with a sudden sense of dark hope. Damn the mammals who threw her in here, thinking they could 'fix' her. Damn the courts or doctors or whoever for sending her here, just stupid proxies trying to cover the truth up. Damn the mammals who didn't accept her warnings about the true evil facing society. She'd get out. She'd keep on fighting. She'd do what had to be done.

And then, there was a certain duo.

Nick Wilde and Judy Hopps.

Nothing else really mattered anymore, she just had to get to them. Get in contact and get their help, because they were the key to this.

Hopps and Wilde took down the Nighthowler Plot, didn't they? With the enemies finally making their move, they could join together and then they'd be unstoppable!

She grinned wickedly as she began working and pulling her face against the padded floor. Just get the thing off. Pull. It. Off. She'd found a slight lip on the padding which she could hook the metal on and the straps stretched as she pulled back, feeling it release ever so slightly.

It snapped back in place, but she shook her head.

Never mind that. She would get it off. She'd get out of here before it was too late. Before _they_ came.

Another try and she paused, only to flinch down as a knock came from the door.

"Hello?" a voice from outside called, sending a chill down her spine. She panicked, her face rubbing more and harder, nipping and tugging and trying to haul it off. She had to. She couldn't let them take her! "I'll be coming in now, is that okay?"

"No it's not!" she shouted back, her words causing her nose to press uncomfortable against the roof of the muzzle. "Nope. Can't come in. Nu-uh. Not now!"

"Listen, I'm here to help you."

"-That's what they all say!"

"It's because we mean it," she said softly, though the prisoner knew better. She began crying as she fought and pulled, trying to tug it off. Rip it off. Tear it off so she could fight back, or even try and rip through the straightjacket sleeves. Get her claws out, and… "-I'm coming in now," the soft voice said, and the sound of an unlocking door rattled out.

"Nu-uh! No you can't! YOU CAN'T! I JUST SAID YOU CAN'T COME IN!" she screamed. She'd said it, hadn't she? Told the intruder that she couldn't come in! Couldn't enter, to do all the terrible things she might be about to do. Rearrange her. Brainwash her. Burn out who she was. Assimilate. Turn. Control. Kill. She began crying, as another desperate tug failed to pull it off. It didn't matter that she'd told them not to come in. They didn't listen to the rules. They were evil and they'd come after her. They weren't going to stop.

This was it.

This was the end…

.

.

Amy opened the door, her heart hurting for the mammal inside. She'd heard many different things about her, but that still hadn't prepared her for the sobs and tears. "I'm not givin' up!" she spat out through sobs. "The flock ain't gonna win! We'll win in the end!"

The binturong blinked. "So, it is real," she said. Sure, she'd read up about it, but seeing was believing.

"Of course it is," the patient said, as she turned and scooted herself into a corner, her free hindpaws out and ready to scratch and tear. Her eyes narrowed as she gazed at the binturong in front of her. "That's why I'm here, ain't it? I discovered the Cudspiracy, and now they've sent you here to shear me solid!" There was a pause, and a glint of hope. "But if you join me, get ridda that domestic sheepdog to your right, we can hightail it out of here! Haven't you heard the nighthowlers are back? We're all for the loom soon!"

Amy took a second to take it all in. "I'm Dr Amy Lupuleli," she greeted. "It's nice to meet you, Miss Honey Badger. I'm here to try and help you."

The eponymously named ratel looked back, her eyes narrowing as she gave another futile shuffle in her jacket. "Big whoop. Now, are you with me, or against me?"

.

.

Honey didn't trust her.

She didn't trust many mammals. She looked on, her body poised and ready to fight, as the binturong walked in closer. Probably just another misled pred following orders, not knowing. Not caring. Or, maybe that guard was ready to put her in the cell next door if she refused to do whatever evil deed the sheep had ordered her to do.

No wonder she wasn't answering, she had no choice.

It was the sheep behind this.

The sheep were behind everything. Uniform, marching line in line, a hive mind, the singular and plural the same. They fought for each other, thought the exact same for each other, and one day planned to annihilate all other species', leaving just themselves. 'Perfect', each mammal the same as the next. Culture and history would go up in smoke, dissenters crushed like insects, to create a world where the past, present and future were one and the same. The ever-lasting Age of Wool.

Not long ago, Dawn Bellwether, the alpha sheep, had tried to put the first stage of their little plot into action. Hopps and Wilde had brought her down, but now the Cudspirators were regrouping for their next offensive. Bloodlines stretching back thousands of years, linking up so many mammals in higher places. Controlling the media, medicine, even food and water supplies.

Honey dreaded to think how much damage had been done to her own body before she'd set up a system to distill pure water for herself.

But she knew.

She knew, and she was willing to fight back, and that was why she was here. She'd screwed up somewhere, despite her best efforts, and now it would end. The binturong was closer now, and Honey grit her eyes and teeth and let loose with her feet. If this was where it ended, she'd die as she lived; fighting.

"LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE! ARGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

…

"-Would you like me to take the muzzle off?"

Honey paused, glancing over at the doctor.

"I'd like to speak to you. Learn about this Cudspiracy of yours. If you calm down and tell me about it, I can take that thing off of you."

Was this a trap?

A way out?

Honey didn't have anything to lose. But she still wouldn't get far.

"Things will be easier if you behave," she said, before pausing. "We wouldn't normally go all out like this, but I heard you caused a lot of damage to the mammals bringing you in. Now, if you help us out a little, we leave all that behind. If you promise not to hurt anyone, we could even take off that straightjacket and get you into a nice room, with an actual bed and a toilet. You can have a desk, with books, even a small TV. Don't you like the sound of that?"

It could just be a gilded cage, but it might actually be a chance to get ready and get out. She did like the sound of it.

"After all," Amy carried on, looking around. "If you have to stay in a cell like this, it's harder for everyone. It's boring for you, and messy for both of us."

"Messy?" Honey asked, sceptically.

Amy shrugged. "How do you think we can feed you, keep you clean, deal with your needs if you're locked up like this? There's a reason cells like these are a last resort."

The ratel's eyes narrowed. "This a trick question or anything?"

"No," Amy said. "I mean, few people on the outside actually think that stuff through, they just think you jacket up a mammal and put them in a cell like this and that's that. Anyway, if you are violent enough that we have to keep you in here, you have to be fed by us when we're able to, via spoon or bottle. You have no choice in when or where or even what. You rarely get a chance for a shower, or a wash, and they're not relaxing ones by any means. There's no entertainment or things to do. As for using the toilet, we can't have something you could knock yourself against or drown yourself in in here for safety reasons, not that you could clean yourself without your paws. You'd have to be in incontinence pads, and I can't think of anyone who likes that solution."

It took a little while for Honey to register what they were saying. It was all dirty sheep tricks, wasn't it, trying to make her play along. But what if she didn't play? Might they get suspicious? She could pretend to cooperate, but it'd be risky. On the other paw, she couldn't take down the Cudspiracy in a padded cell. She huffed, shaking her head. She'd play the binturong's game, at least until she found a way out.

To be honest though, she should have expected such dirty tricks from the sheep.

"So," Amy began. "Keep calm, help both of us, and why don't you tell me about this Cudspiracy?"

Honey blinked, before relaxing. She'd still keep herself just on edge, in case the shrink pulled some sheep dip syringe on her, but it was hard to deny that explaining the hidden truth behind the world to a fellow pred, one who was willing to listen, was gonna be a real buzz.

.

.

.

.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

.

.

“-and then, tracing back further, you get to the Renaissance, and the reformation of the Church of the Lamb by our good old bad ram, Martin Loomer,” Honey carried on, her mouth, still muzzled, beginning to get dry. She paused, getting some saliva in her mouth and running it around, trying to keep it all moist.

“Want a drink?” Amy asked.

She paused and blinked. “You really think I’m that dumb?” she asked, before laughing. “You  _ really _ think!?”

The binturong nodded slightly, noting down the laugh before flicking over to another page on her rapidly depleting notebook. This had been… -something.

“The new church you see, was take four! Take four! On trying to make a new world religion, to indoctrinate mammals into the flock. Ewedaism, the old church, Islamb and now the new church! Why d’ya think they pulled it over to the New World, huh? New world, new colony, new religion, new chance to gestate an army and then take over. -Course, they failed what with the native mammals fighting back and other mammals coming over, so they began moving things around. Now, given that they owned the banking system and like and helped found Zootopia, while keeping it out of the States or the Dominion, I was a bit lost for a while. Why not use their power to make it sheep-only? Sure, there’s disposable workers for industry and stuff, all powered with the energy from the city’s uber dam on the Kula river. Most of that energy all went to the climate works, but that’s obviously a test as part of their global terror-forming plan! Don’t want no desert or ice wastes in the age of wool, just rolling green boring meadowlands. But why did they want old Zoot to be a melting pot? Obvs, because it gave them a petri dish to test on. Them nighthowlers were the test you see? First test, to see how the world would react when they launched their attack. We live in the perfectly balanced city, as all things should be, so it was the best way to see if they could turn the modern mammal against one group… -and then after that another… -and after that another. And  _ boom! _ Bye-bye Zootopia, hello, Ewetopia! ..or Ramtopia or Lambtopia”

“I see,” the therapist noted, before pausing. Her patient was enjoying this, just being able to preach and preach and preach. Cudspiracy 101 had taken them across all seven continents, back to the stone age, and here and back again. She’d put up with it though, given that if there was any hope to be had, in both understanding and helping this mammal, it would start with Honey trusting her.

Speaking of which.

“Say?” she asked. “Do you want that muzzle off?”

There was a pause, the ratel eyeing her up, thinking and thinking. She looked over at the guard, standing in the door, then back at Amy. “Sure thing boss.” With a few swift paw movements, off the thing came, the honey badger opening wide and stretching her mouth. “That’s nice,” she commented. “That’s real nice. -Speaking of nice… That’s what Nick and Judy were! They fought the cudspiracy and halted it for just a little bit! They’re real heroes, you know?”

“We all have a lot to thank them for,” Amy replied, smiling. Just as she’d done the three other times the fox and bunny pair had turned up in Honey’s conversation. Amy wished she could mention her involvement with the duo. . Knowing that she helped Wilde could be a big trust builder between the two of them. But confidentiality laws were confidentiality laws...

Maybe she’d talk to Nick about it. Ask if she could say some things, or get him to come to her in person? Would Honey trust the fox more than her? Then again, she’d seemed a bit hostile to her wolf guard, who would surely be on the other end of the sliding scale. Why was that, she wondered, before deciding she might as well ask. “Given that I’m a predator, I can understand why you’d trust me more,” she began, before looking over at the wolf. “But wouldn’t he be the least likely to be in the conspiracy. He’s a wolf after all. Surely sheep would never work with him.”

There was a glint in Honey’s eye. “Oh yeah, the sheep hate wolves alright. Even more than lions. And that’s why you should always trust a lion and never a wolf!”

Amy blinked. Not for the first time, the honey badger had lost her. “Can you explain that, please?”

“Well,” she said proudly, jiggling about in her straitjacket. “What’s worse, more humiliating, than knocking out and killing up your least favourite species? -Turning them into a pet! They’ve been warring against the wolves for eons, drugging and manipulating them. Most of the poor dum-dums are now just brainwashed sheep-dogs. Sleeper agents. The works!” She paused, fixing her eyes on the very indignant guard. “Say the right codeword to him, and he might kill us all. Or, as he’s been trained and raised to protect the sheep, he’s doing just that right now.”

“I don’t know what you’re on,” the wolf guard butted in. “But last I checked, I don’t know any sheep, and I’m pretty damn sure my brain’s working fine - which is more than I can say for you.”

Honey looked at him like he was a cub that had just done something adorably cute. “Aaaawwww. You say that, good boy. Don’t worry, we’ll find the cure. You’ll be free soon. It’s not your fault they made you this way. You don’t deserve what’s going to happen to you, don’t you? Don’t you good boy?”

“Dare I ask what’ll happen to me?” the guard huffed.

“Well,” Honey began, smiling again. “When you’re not useful anymore, the sheep will take you into a woodshed or the like with a shotgun, and you can figure out the rest. BLAM! SPLAT! D-E-D, DEAD!”

Amy coughed loudly - best keep tensions with the guard from escalating further. “Yes, well, that’s very vivid,” she said, closing her notebook. “Miss Badger…”

“-Call me Honey, please.”

“Honey, I’ll be seeing you soon. However, as you’ve behaved, I think we can take you to a nicer cell and get you out of that straitjacket while I work on your case.” She paused, glowering slightly. “That said, you injured the guards on your way here, and if you’re violent again we’ll have to keep you in a more secure facility. None of us want that, so please don’t make this harder for yourself.”

“Oh no!” she chirped. “I won’t. Double-triple promise.” She frantically began nodding her head up and down, as Amy gestured to the guard to move her up. As he moved in though, she paused.

“Say…” she began, pausing. “I totally get that on pain of death you may not be able to say this, but…”

“But?”

“But,” Honey said, her voice lowering slightly. “You knew about my theories and the like. You totally knew.” She paused and stared into Honey’s eyes as they began to tear up. “Only a few resistance fighters know about it… Which one sold me out?” She sniffed. “Which of my friends turned traitor?”

.

.

.

The cell door opened and Honey was escorted out, the wolf guard guiding her. Amy followed, assuaging the ratel. “I promise, though, no-one betrayed you or handed you into us,”

“I’m still not totally sure ‘bout that,” the badger noted, pausing slightly. “But I think I’ll try and trust you. There’s very few mammals I do that to, you hear?”

“I hear,” Amy agreed, as Honey was taken out of the padded cell and up to one of the secure care wards. The badger’s cooperation was a big relief for Amy. Cooping up mammals in the padded cells full-time was a miserable experience for both patients and staff. Speaking of which, a crew of caretakers was coming down now, with a push trolley full of items. Honey watched as they passed her, before stopping outside of the cell next door to her old one. One of the attendants, dressed in a full up hybrid hazmat/bomb suit, checked that they had what was required. A bowl of food and water, a new straightjacket and a bag of changing supplies. He gulped, before entering the room, a set of rabid screams and slobbering sounds streaming out as they struggled to deal with the patient. Amy stayed until the tired, battered, stained and bruised attendants dashed out of the cell. One of them angrily threw a used incontinence pad into the bin, before slamming the door shut and looking up at Amy. “Why can’t we just sedate that one?”

“His family doesn’t want us too,” she said, as she peeked in at the most difficult patient they kept here. It was a long journey for the family to take, coming all the way from Outback Island, but there was no facility there could handle… well,  _ that _ .

“It really puts the ‘mania’ into his species name, doesn’t it,” the attended grunted, as he walked away.

Amy, though, was more hung up on the thought of his family, and that of another patient’s.

.

.

It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d met with another member of the medical profession; one involved in research, drug development and biochemistry.

She’d given Amy dockets of information, copies of pictures and handwritten notes. She’d talked and talked about her younger sister, what she did and her long history, before asking Amy if she would go ahead and section her.

At first, Amy had been sceptical of the information and unsure about the reports sent by post, or of the interviews with friends and associates. But then, as the news of nighthowlers being in play again rang out and the older sister begged her, pleaded with her, to do something before her younger sibling did something crazy, she’d realised something.

“Something's up with you. What is it?”

The sister’s strenuous denials confirmed it.

“There’s another reason why you’re trying to get me to do this. Please. Tell me.”

So, she had. She’d told her of the time a liaison from the Mayor’s Office came to talk to her, asking about bringing her onto a project of national importance. Critical importance. There was a new epidemic spreading, one that could tear Zootopia apart. Reportedly it was a secret, the risks of telling the public too high and, while she was nervous about the matter, she had agreed. She’d sworn an oath to help and to protect and heal, and, as far as she knew, this was officially sanctioned. The Mayor was behind this, wasn’t he? So, after signing the state secrets act, she was shown the mammals who’d already succumbed. The savage predators, their numbers growing day by day as reports of their disappearances grew.

Yes, they were missing off the street, but that had to be done to keep panic to a minimum. It was government-sanctioned, after all. It had to be the right thing to do, and so she’d set to work, trying to find a cure but never quite pinning it down. The numbers had just grown and grown and then, when she felt that keeping it a secret wasn’t going to be viable anymore, she’d asked the Mayor about it. Asked him what the chief of police and others thought.

She then learned just how much of a secret it was, right before it all crumbled. Led away in cuffs, thrown in jail as an accessory to kidnapping, she’d felt scared, confused and betrayed. She’d thought what she was doing was legal, necessary, critical to keeping the people safe. Only now she was behind bars, her lawyer telling her that her signing of the secrets act should provide enough plausible deniability to help her get bail at the very least

But she’d watched on as the case was cracked open and exposed, and the mammals she was locked in with soon turned against her. Rumours flew quickly in there, and she felt like a kick or a stab was waiting just around the corner. She could hold on, though. Her sister visited. She told her sternly that she was dead to her, but there were so many little ticks and in-jokes that Dr Madge Badger had known this was an act. Winks and nudges, and ‘I’m totally not gonna’s’, all of which told her that Honey thought she was a victim. In here as she’d been fighting against the first wave of ‘the Cudspiracy.

She got bail after a few days and went home. She called her boyfriend, who was away, and asked him to be there, to help her, to hold her. She was scared. She was scared as the lawyers worked away, even as hers argued that the recording of her that Hopps made, when she’d asked about Chief Bogo’s opinion, helped further her case. She was scared as the very justification that Lionheart had used, that it was too dangerous for the public to know, turned out to be true. Savage predators, injured mammals, riots, rampant fear and discrimination; it had felt like the world was coming to an end. She cried, knowing that while the Mayor had betrayed her, he’d been right. Her duty was to cause the least amount of harm, and that was exactly what she’d been doing. Now she might go to jail for it, all as Zootopia fell apart.

Honey had urged her to go into hiding, but Madge had refused. The only thing she could think of doing, to try and redeem herself, was to continue her work to try and find a cure. She asked Mayor Bellwether if she’d be allowed to. After all, she knew more about the savage preds than anyone. She’d been refused. She’d asked again, and again. Meanwhile her case had ticked on, before being dropped by the old DA just as his term ended. Her lawyer had said that the old wolf, given all that was happening, had felt that Lionheart and his team had been in the right. They hadn’t exactly taken those mammals against their will, had they? Besides, who could fault them when the true reality presented itself. Who could blame them when they simply did the least harmful option they could choose? 

So, she had her reprieve, though Lionheart would still face judgement. Her solace was only temporary though, given Bellwether promoting ADA Kurt Wassermaim, a highly vocal 'savage critic', to the open position ahead of firm favourite, and far more moderate, ADA Jeanette Deaux. As a result, there was an underlying fear that the new DA would double down on the ex-Mayor and likely reopen the case against other members of his team. Not just Madge, but even the security detail.

So it wasn’t even that much of a reprieve. The world was still going wrong. Thankfully, though, she finally got her wish from Mayor Bellwether. She could return to the lab to help out the ZPD/ZMS taskforce meant to deal with the savage predator crisis.

And then the truth emerged about everything before she had even attended her first shift there.

Madge hadn’t known what to think. She grimly realised, not long after, that her return to the lab might coincide with a dart being fired at herself. What better way to take out such a thorn in their side, and supress the research, than turning her? Over time, though, she was overtaken by a giddy optimism. She helped develop the final cure, feeling untold relief as she finally brought all the mammals back. What’s more, thanks to a popular campaign led by the original missing mammals, none of whom had much ill-will or desire to push charges against former Mayor Lionheart, it was decided to drop those against him and thus her.

She was free. She was safe. She’d gripped onto her new life hard. The diamond ring on her finger was proof enough about that.

But, as the ashes fell, she saw a new fire begin to burn. She’d always put up with her sister. Cared for her, despite her behaviour. After all, it was harmless. Except it no longer was. She saw the Bellwether conspiracy as proof, not that she needed such a thing before, and redoubled her efforts. Worse still, society seemed to be ready to empower Honey onwards. After all, it was a very bad time to be a sheep after Bellwether’s very public downfall, and especially after the revelation that many of her subordinates were sheep like her. Low level ovinophobia was somewhat ignored by society, as it guilted itself about the Nighthowler plot and the treatment of preds, and in some circles it became popular if not celebrated to ‘call them out’. Soon everyone had seen posts, or protest signs, or the odd internet article which got away with saying vicious things about them. Whole progressive media sites, some of them spin-offs of reputable newspapers, seemed to almost adopt it as a central worldview. Sheep jokes were now far more common and tolerated far more than pred, bunny or other ones. Some sheep who tried to speak up were accused of simply being apologists or stooges for Bellwether, or speciesist pred haters. Many trendy young activists put forward arguments that you couldn’t ever be speciesist against sheep no matter what you said or did, as they had ‘power’ or something. That one still confused Madge.

It didn’t matter though. What did matter was that Honey began making a name for herself online, and mammals were believing her and encouraging her on. She was even becoming popular on ZooTube. Many comments congratulated her on calling out the sheep and their privilege, and urged her on. Alarm bells were ringing, and the worry took over Madge again. Her sister was burying herself deeper and deeper into her hole, while beginning to talk about revenge. Attacks. Fighting back against the sheep.

Madge hadn’t been in jail long, but she’d been there long enough to know her sister couldn’t cope if she was thrown in there. If she went in, she most likely wouldn’t come out again. She was the squarest peg, and it would be like forcing her into the roundest hole. It wouldn’t work and she’d suffer. It would be hell. There was no way she could cope, other than ending it.

How could you ever let that happen to your own family?

That was what it came down to in the end; family. To most outside mammals, Honey Badger was a raging speciesist loon. Many of her designs and concepts were pure on terror, hate crimes, and so on. The simmering anger against sheep was being ignored for now, but a vigilante revenge attack or a full-on assault on the species as a whole? There would be no getting out of it. She’d go to jail and never return.

Madge cried into Amy, asking her to try and fix her sister; to show her the mercy that the courts most likely wouldn’t. She hated the idea of locking her up and trying to change her, but she could think of no better option. She’d been forced into making that same decision she'd made with Lionheart and the savage predators, but it was even less clear this time. Was her sister even insane, or just a vile speciesist? Was the risk she might pose to others, and herself, a good enough reason to take away her freedom? She didn’t know. She really didn’t, and it scared her. Everything scared her.

She just wanted her sister back and safe, and with the nighthowlers returning, she felt that leaving it any later would result in Honey doing something unforgivable in retaliation.

Amy, standing at the same decision this poor mammal had had to make twice before, closed her eyes and agreed with her. Honey Badger was heavily on the spectrum, arguably enough to make her unfit to stand trial, but it was debatable. Her behaviour was erratic, confusing, and her ideology bizarre and nonsensical. Then again, the same could be said about flat-earthers,anti-vaxxers or religious fundamentalists, and they didn’t belong here. But this mammal was a risk to others. It was enough to justify bringing her in for observation and diagnosis, for now.

Despite getting what she came for, Madge wept. After all, she’d just got her sister committed; sectioned. She begged Amy to never let Honey know about her involvement, fearing their relationship would be destroyed and how much it would hurt her younger sister, to whom trust was fickle, yet that in her sister was absolute.

Amy had promised.

.

.

“But,” Honey said, her voice lowering slightly. “You knew about my theories and the like. You totally knew.” She paused, and stared into Honey’s eyes, tears beginning to form in them. “Only a few resistance fighters know about it… Which one sold me out?” She sniffed. “Which mammal I trusted did this to me?”

Amy leant in, as the wolf guard came to help move her along. “It wasn’t hard. We had a look at your ZooTube channel and your old records, then we interviewed a few mammals.. We came to this decision by ourselves.”

“No betrayal?” she asked, hope returning to her voice.

“I promise, though, no-one betrayed you or handed you into us,” Amy assuaged, as the wolf guard led Honey out. Off she went to her new room, Amy standing by as some staffers dealt with poor Mr Taznarian in his cell. She eventually left him and his odd grunts and slobbering sounds and returned to her office.

Taking away a mammal’s freedom when they hadn’t done anything, all to help others. To protect others. Both she and Madge had agreed that it was necessary, justified, the lesser of all evils. But it was still an evil, wasn’t it? Wasn’t their fundamental creed to do no harm? Could those two worlds, those two moralities, ever truly co-exist?

She was a psychiatrist, not a philosopher. Most of the time, those things didn’t tend to go together, though she personally knew at least one colleague where it did…

Regardless, would there ever be a right answer?

She sighed, knowing that she’d better get to work on something else and keep her mind out of that bottomless pit.

.

.

Eventually she signed off with her preliminary notes and suspicions, before signing out of the building.

She hoped that she had earned Honey’s trust - or at the very least was on the way to earning it. That was the very first step in the very long road they were about to travel. She was pretty certain that they’d be able to get a full diagnosis and section by the end of the next day, which meant Honey would be kept here for the foreseeable future. It would be tough, it would be hard, but one day they’d get to the end.

With such a tricky case like this, Amy hoped it would be a happy one.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

.

By the next day, Honey had settled in to her new cell. They called it a room, but she knew the truth. There was a nice comfy bed, her own bathroom, a little TV with all the channels along with some books, but it was still a cell. They said she had to be in here at a certain time and that they’d lock the door at night, so it was a cell. That, and the fact that the whole place was a prison. The honey badger knew that very well; she wasn’t stupid. She had an area she could mingle with other  _ prisoners _ in, and they could go out into a  _ prison yard _ , which was surrounded by fences made to keep them in. They all looked nice, were comfy and pretty, and there were nice and innocent things to do. She snorted at it all. The sheep thought they were oh so clever, didn’t they? Try and disguise it all with nice licks of paint and smiling staff and happy words. There were dumb cub games and activities, to keep all those prisoners happy and occupied but not too stimulated. She knew the facade when she saw it though. She knew their plot, and that she was being spied on right at this very moment. They were waiting for the right moment in time, the right chance, all so they could pounce and take her. Kill her or drug her.

She was scared. She was angry. She was determined.

She was going to get out of this, some way, somehow. It was just a matter of waiting for her opportunity. She’d already got that binturong tricked up, believing that she was going to cooperate with her! The sheepdog… -Might be an issue.

She sighed, bouncing slightly as she sat on her bed, looking over at her new uniform. Like all things, she knew it was a prison one, albeit much nicer than an official prison version. A comfy tracksuit, with a shirt and jacket, rather than a colour coded one-piece jumpsuit.

She looked up at the clock and grumbled. Breakfast would soon be starting, far later than she would have had hers, which bugged her to no end.

It…

It just wasn’t right!

Breakfast simply wasn’t that late! They’d taken her from her home, and were now doing things  _ wrong _ , though she guessed it was all part of their nasty little plan. She’d been half tempted to wait it out, outside the canteen, waiting for it to open up. Then again, however much it made her cringe, she knew she had to adapt. Try and keep in her cell, not draw attention to herself, play along…

It was time to go now, and she hurried along, glancing from side to side just to be sure of things. She arrived just over fifteen minutes early and slumped down next to the door. Glancing through the clear bit of glass in it, she watched as the staffers set things up in anticipation. She also kept an eye out for anything suspicious. After all, if there was a sheep setting things up in there, she’d want to avoid anything it could contaminate.

Her ears rose and she turned to see a new arrival. A white rabbit, twitching about nervously, as he mumbled to himself, glancing up at a clock as he did so. “ _ Late, late, late… _ ”

“You okay?” she asked, cautiously.

He looked up and shook his head, his buck teeth chewing on his lower lip as he did so. “No-no-no… -Too much going on. I’m late for it all. Late for a very important date, you see. Yes, a very important date.”

“What date?” she asked, before pausing, a bit of concern running through her. “Is it a wedding? My sister is gonna get married, and I plan to be a bridesmaid! It’s a real long way away though.”

“I… No, not that.”

She breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good. It’d be really evil of the sheep to bring you in here right before that.”

He paused, blinking at her. “Uh… -No, I… -Uh, I handed myself in. I was late, late you see. For a very important date. But I can’t remember what it is or why. I just know I’m late. Very, very late.”

“Right then,” Honey said, a smile on her face as she pointed at him, chuckling. “You know, you’re crazy, and I mean super duper crazy!”

“I… uh…” he mumbled.

“Probably things the sheep put in your stuff. Do you have any favourite foods here? Watcha having for breakfast?”

“Well,” he mumbled, fidgeting his fingers against each other, I like hay wafers with some alfalfa, along with some tea.”

Honey’s face winced up, and she stuck her tongue out in disgust. “ _ Blearghhhh _ … Even before I knew it was drugged up, I’d never eat that stuff.”

Whatever she was about to say after that was cut off though by the door opening, a camel nurse letting her in. It really was far too late for breakfast, so now she could have it she raced in, straight towards the cereal table. Looking through it, she scanned for a box of Honey Chomps, up and down the table, seeing dozens of brands for dozens of species, before the horrifying reality sunk in; there wasn’t an ounce of Honey Chomps to be seen. “No-no-no,” she hissed, one of her paws clenching tighter. She couldn’t frickin’ believe it...

“May I help you?” a nurse asked. She was a tahr, almost like a deer but with a sheeplike head and with curved horns, like a goat. Any semblance to the evil mammals of white though was counteracted by the differences. As far as the flock was concerned, she was a pawn, a nothing, which meant she was as harmless as anyone here was to Honey. With that in mind, the honey badger looked up at her before pointing at the table.

“Uh, Honey Chomps?”

The nurse looked over and shook her head. “We don’t have any.”

“Well, get some,” Honey said, a bit irritated. Wasn’t what she needed to do obvious? She had honey chomps for breakfast, period. That was what she had. That was what she always had!

The nurse blinked. “I could put them on the order list. They’ll come in on Saturday.”

Honey gasped. “Tha… That’s three days away! What am I supposed to eat until then?”

“There’s plenty of other things you…”

“-NO!” the ratel angrily butted in. She’d tried to be reasonable, sweet lord she had, but she had her limits. This was simple; this was serious. They’d taken her from her home, they’d already messed up the time of breakfast, and now they weren’t going to get her cereal for a few more days! She’d already suffered enough. She’d already bent over backwards plenty of times for them. It was all so unfair! Things were already messed up far too much when compared to how they should be, and Honey had had enough of it. “I want my Honey Chomps! NOW!”

“We don’t work like that,” she said, backing off a little bit as Honey began to breathe in deeply, her fists clenching. It wasn’t fair. It really wasn’t fair! “How about some honey on…”

“-I WANT MY HONEY CHOMPS!” she shouted, before marching forwards. The nurse tried to step back but Honey ploughed into her legs before she could react. The ratel pushed into her, throwing her arms out with force, the nurse trying to block it but failing. It was a simple shove, one that didn’t really tax the mammal who did it, but it was enough to make the tahr lose balance and fall on her rear.

A hush came over the room.

There were more mammals in it now but everyone was quiet, looking at her, not that she knew. She was angry, she was upset, and she was running away and ignoring them as she raced back to her room. Her cell. The place that she was having to stay which wasn’t her home, wasn’t her bunker where she could be safe, but it was all she had as the dumb tears just began flowing and flowing and flowing…

It wasn’t fair.

It just wasn’t!

Everything was wrong, and stupid, and she remembered that it was the sheep doing this to her. It was those damn evil sheep, and knowing that helped her feel better. She was crying less now. She could focus her anger on the sheep.

This was their fault, and she could fix it.

Get back at them.

Especially with the help of the dynamic duo, Wilde and Hopps.

Through the odd sob, she smiled. She was looking forward to her revenge.

.

.

Amy read the reports and looked at the recordings before sighing. She’d been hoping that things wouldn’t be getting too hectic too soon, yet right away she was seeing her new patient having a meltdown.

Well, more a tantrum, but still something one wouldn’t expect from a mature adult mammal. Then again, from what she’d seen and heard, Honey Badger was  _ not _ one of those. The question, or rather questions, was what she was, why she was, and what they could do about it.

Amy had theories, ideas, plans…

She had to check things out, but there was a roadmap she could follow, and hopefully these things would work out better than Honey’s morning. So, she strolled down to the secure ward the ratel was staying on before checking in with the nurses. The tahr Honey had knocked down had made a report of the incident and was doing okay, more surprised than anything. All the paperwork and due diligence had been done, which meant that everyone was more or less covered. Amy talked a little to them, gleaning some more tidbits that she’d previously been unaware of, which she then chose to follow up on.

Finally, close to half an hour later than planned, she rapped on Honey’s door before a guard let her in. He closed it behind her, keeping watch, as she settled onto the bed next to her patient.

…

“So,” she began softly. “I heard you got a bit upset earlier on.”

Honey was sitting by her, staring into the corner of the room, doing her best to ignore her.

“You also said a few little hurtful things to another one of my patients. One who was minding his day, tried to talk to you, and you insulted him.”

Slowly but surely, the honey badgers’ ears perked up slightly, and she turned around, gazing at her through the corner of her eye. “Was this the grey bunny?”

“He was a white rabbit.”

“Tch…” Honey grunted, before shaking her head. “Close enough, I guess. I didn’t insult him though.”

“You called him crazy,” Amy pointed out. Almost immediately, the ratel’s face snapped around to look at her.

“What?” she asked incredulously, her voice racing up in volume. “That? But… -I was just telling the truth. He  _ is _ crazy!”

“He has severe anxiety issues, which tend to make him forget things,” she explained, before frowning a bit as she remembered the sad situation he was in. “Forgetting things then makes him more anxious, and it just goes on and gets worse.”

“That’s just a real long explanation of the type of crazy he is,” she justified, before a victorious smirk spread across her muzzle.

Amy frowned. “If you really think that, you could try to be more polite about it,” she suggested. “Maybe just say that he has issues. He may not like being called crazy, you know.”

“I…” Honey began to say, only for her ears to dip down. “I hurt his feelings, didn’t I?” She looked down, chewing with her muzzle slightly. She looked remorseful to Amy, but irritated as well. “-It’s… -But we’re meant to tell the truth too, and… -and it’s just dumb and doesn’t make logic,” she muttered, before pointing at the therapist. “I don’t get why it’s so easy for you, but for me it isn’t.”

“Well,” Amy explained, “I’m pretty sure that you know that you have issues, just like he has. Issues that make it hard for you.”

She nodded. “Yeah! I mean, my family all says I have this ‘autism’ thing, and it makes me act different. But, like, I just feel normal doing these things, and others are  _ weird _ …”

“Weird in what way?” Amy asked, encouraging her on. There was a glint in the ratel’s eyes.

“Well, they always tell me to tell the truth, but then say that I shouldn’t tell the truth, which just doesn’t make logic! Then they say I’m spending too much time putting things in the right order, as if they can’t be asked…”

“So, making things not messy? Cleaning up…”

Honey chuckled. “Nah. I’m a horrible mess bug, pretty much. But certain things gotta be in certain places, or they look better lined up, or there’s an order that things are best done in and other mammals don’t see that! And then they get mad with me for doing it all the right way!”

“I’m guessing this whole breakfast thing was due to things being in the wrong order, then?”

Honey nodded rapidly. “Yeah. I have my breakfast at six-o-clock, on the dot, watching Sheep Propaganda Channel 6 while protected by my tinfoil hat, as I munch on my Honey Chomps. That’s the way it is!” She paused slightly, grumbling. “And if you’re gonna take me from my home, stick me in this jail cell, and mess everything up, the least you can do is have my Honey Chomps!”

Amy nodded, pausing as she noted everything down. “This isn’t a jail cell.”

Honey snorted. “I was locked in earlier. If it smells like a jail cell, feels like a jail cell, make logic that it is, doesn’t it?”

“You’re not in jail. You’re in a hospital.”

There was a pause as Honey thought, before she shrugged and stood up. “So, I can check myself out and go home then, I guess” she said, walking past Amy and grabbing the door. Opening it up though, she was met by the imposing figure of one of the wolf guards. “‘Scuse…”

…

She frowned, before marching into a wall of wolf, shaking him badly from the unexpected and heavily underestimated impact. Recovering though, he put his paws on her shoulder, braced himself and held her still in the doorway. “I advise you get back in there,” he warned. “You’re on thin ice as it is.”

…

“Fine…” she hissed, before grabbing his paws and chucking them off her. She marched back up to Amy and looked her right in her eyes. “Some hospital, not letting me go home, is it?” she barbed.

The binturong, slightly worried by her patients imposing gaze, kept her calm. “We can’t let you go until you’re better.”

“And when will that be?”

“Well, I plan to put forward my diagnosis and recommendation later today which, once approved, means you’ll be here until we feel it’s safe to release you. That’s when you admit your problems, and we’ve got you well on the track of getting better,” Amy explained.

“Okay. I have this autism thing. Can it be fixed? Nope! So I’m here forever! Whoop-de-dooo! I’m in jail!”

She marched away from Amy, right into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her. Amy could easily use her key card to override the lock and march in, but she wouldn’t do that. This would be a long and tiring process of building trust, given what she might need to do later. If Honey wanted some privacy, she’d get it. Amy though would sit by the door, listening in and waiting until she’d calmed down. She was angry in there and needed to work it out. As she did so, though, the binturong sighed. Much as she hated to admit it, bringing her in was the right decision. For all Honey talked about being in a prison here, the real thing would be so much worse for her.

.

.

She couldn’t stand it.

Honey just couldn’t stand it any longer.

She smashed her fists into the wall, feeling the cathartic pulses of pain that came with each impact.

They filtered through her rage and tears, and helped her focus.

A few slams of the side of her head into the wall did the same thing, only a bit better.

She still cried though. Sniffing, her teeth bared.

Why couldn’t they tell the truth! Why was that damn binturong being so two faced? Just say that she was locked up already and be done with it. Everything in that moment was just too much for her.

She’d been captured. The sheep had her. She was in a damn jail! She wasn’t a bad mammal, she wasn’t, she knew that! It was them, testing her, and it was unfair.

Everything, absolutely everything, in the entire world was cruel and nasty and just not fair.

…

Honey felt a bit calmer now. She was able to wash her face, and looked up to see her red and puffy eyes. She needed a drink, so she went to the toilet. She wasn’t going to trust the tap water, given all the stuff the sheep happened to put in it; fluoridation and brain-chems and all that. She’d dreamt about starting a war to stop that, in one of her many daydreams… She had no bombs though, slight problem there. It would likely also backfire. Worst came to the worst, and it might be the opportunity for them to implement the Dr Strangelamb ratio of ten sheep mammals to every non sheep mammal.

So, not good.

Really not good.

Regardless, she’d worked out that this place used rainwater recycling to flush the toilets and water the gardens. She smiled. Those regulations were put in by the green lobby, which was secretly run and puppeted by the sheep, trying to ruin and de-growth the economy. Soon the climate wall would be turned down to save energy, and everyone would be made poor by putting solar panels and stuff in dumb places like the rainforest, what with its clouds and leaf cover, even though the city got more than enough clean energy from its dam.

All part of a plan to make everyone poorer and get rid of the exotic species.

Then they’d mess up the grid, mammals without thick wool would freeze in the winter, and the sheep would be dominant.

-Not that the oil industry, or the housebuilders, or the conservationists, or the unions, or the bankers, or pretty much anyone else was any better.

Any movement with any real weight had been infiltrated to some degree or other. All serving the greater purpose.

But, in this case, they’d tripped over their own clipped-off tails! Thanks to their attempts to make everything more expensive, ‘saving water’ when they had plenty, they’d given her a nice free source of non-drugged water, so she wasn’t going to die of thirst.

She looked at the toilet, then took off the cistern lid and drunk from inside it, before placing it back down, chuckling as she did so. Why was it that so many idiots thought she drunk from the pan? Now _that_ would have been crazy.

She was feeling better now. However, she thought she’d stay in here. It was nice. Quiet. She frowned though as a knock interrupted that. That damned lying therapist. “GO AWAY!”

“Honey. I was wondering if you were feeling better?”

“Was, till you spoke up,” she hissed.

“And why’s that?”

“You’re a liar!” she accused, shouting it out. “Trying to confuse me and all! You act like you’re my friend, and you’re trying to help me, but I know the truth!”

…

“Is this about the ‘jail’ thing?”

…

“Honey?”

“Yeah,” she hissed. “Why don’t you just say this is a jail, and the sheep have me locked up here, and be done. I can’t go home, can I? You’re keeping me in till you fix something that can’t be fixed and I don’t want fixed! I’m here forever, so it’s a jail! Just say it!”

“Honey, do you know what a real jail would be like?”

“Like this…” she muttered.

"Well," Amy began. "How about I tell you."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Just a fun thing to mention, series 1 has now tipped over into the 6 digits. Wooohooo! I'd like to thank my ever diligent proofer, Dancou Maryuu, and all my followers, likers and commentators. Hope you've enjoyed it so far, as there's still plenty to come.
> 
> .
> 
> .

**Chapter 4**

.

.

"Go on then," Honey huffed. "What would being sent to the big house be like?"

"Let's start with your first day," Amy began. "You'd be marched in in an ugly jail uniform, chained to others. You'd be undressed, showered, probed, searched, de-loused, given an ugly prison uniform, inducted and then put into a cell half the size of your room that you might be sharing with someone else. If that was the case, you'd have to go to the bathroom with them next to them, and your bathroom wouldn't be separate. You'd have to use a toilet right next to your bed."

Honey cringed slightly, before looking away, her paws fidgeting with each other. "Yeah," she said, a slight inflection of worry creeping in. "I've seen a jail cell before. And those back-zipped uniforms they wear… But… But a uniform in blue and one of these things are pretty much the same thing. Just with stripes and not spots."

"I've heard the prison ones are awkward, uncomfortable and baggy," Amy pointed out. "And if you got sent to a real prison, you'd be in khaki, orange or red, depending on what type of place you were in."

"Oh, yeah," Honey chuckled, shaking her head. Blue uniforms were for the low security male inmates, like what Lionheart wore during his brief stint, with medium security and high getting yellow and red respectively. She'd learnt all the uniform colour codes, even the fact that youths in proper juvie wore black and white. She slapped herself slightly for forgetting all that. "Me just being a bit dumb there…" she said, laughing a little. It was dumb, and a bit silly…

"You wouldn't be laughing like that in there, though," Amy pointed out, a grave tone in her voice. Honey paused, turning to listen in. "We believed that you might have been about to attack some sheep, yes?"

Honey paused. She'd been working on… contingencies… maybe planning out some pre-emptive strike ideas for fun. But she wasn't really planning an attack yet. After all, she had nowhere near enough support for it to work! If you were going to provoke a giant, you'd have to be ready to win the fight there and then. She'd been getting ready though, boy she had been. She'd even finished designing her brand new anti-sheep 'knit-o-matic' device, her piece-de-resistance. She'd been jumping out and down in glee, ready to start building it, and imagining it up and running.

Had they found out though? Aimed to pre-empt her pre-empt of a pre-empt? A slight wave of worry spreading through her, she guessed she'd have to pull a few little lies. "Nope. I have no idea what you're talking about, at all!"

…

"Suppose you were," Amy continued. "That might get you into a medium or high security jail. It depends on how much damage you've done and how much of a threat they think you are, which also influences how long you get sent away for. Let's say you kill a sheep as you think they are evil. You say they're Bellwether's heirs or something…"

Honey thought it best not to mention that she knew who exactly said heirs were, and had been keeping an eye on them.

"You might get life with parole after fifteen years," she continued. "You get into jail on your first day, and like here, your breakfast is at the wrong time and they don't have the cereal. You act like you did earlier. Here, we let you get back to your room and, though we locked you in for a little, nothing much has changed. There, you'd get a guard hauling you off and giving you a few days in isolation due to a fight. The same for every fight. What they say goes, Honey, and you'd have to go with it and not lash out. Are you able to do that, however 'wrong' they get?"

…

"I…" she said, beginning to chew her bottom lip as she looked away.

"Fifteen years at least, Honey, and I fear that with how you act you'd get far longer than that. They'd likely also deny you at your parole hearings, given your bad behaviour… Do you think you could cope with that? Day in, day out, for the rest of your life."

Beginning to breath a bit faster, Honey's eyes narrowed. "I… I can look after myself!" she defended.

"Maybe you can," Amy agreed. "But you'd suffer horribly in prison. I think we both know that. That's why you're here. So we can help you avoid it."

"So, I'm not stuck in jail as I'm stuck in here," she barbed back. "Why don't you do that to everyone?" She paused as she said it, her eyes widening. Could that be a sheep plot? It seemed like more mammals were having mental problems these days, could that be by design? Something in the water, giving them these problems, and then more would go to these hospitals until only sheep were left on the outside. Or maybe the uptick was the sheep silencing a growing number of potential rebels by casting them as madmammals?

She smiled, a warm and victorious feeling flowing through her, almost tingling her extremities. She smiled with the deep satisfaction of having uncovered another one of their little plots, understanding how, once more, ordinary mammals were caught up in the sheep's machine. It felt good knowing that all this suffering was coming from them, that it was another head of the hydra that, one day, they could kill. She could do something about it in the long distant future, with allies like Wilde and Hopps at her side. Together they'd vanquish a terrible ancient evil, she knew it! Relaxing, she paused as she heard Amy speaking.

"-or problems, that we, in here, can fix."

"Can you repeat that?"

"I said that most mammals out there don't have a real big problem like you do; a problem, or problems, that we can fix in here."

She snorted. "Again. You can't fix how I am. My parents say I'm 'autistic', the doctors do, and I went and checked. You can't fix that!"

"It's not your autism that's the issue," Amy began. "You have many others, ones that can be fixed. Some might be conditions -I'm pretty sure you have some personality disorders. Other issues are ideas you have, but at the end of the day the biggest concern is your extreme hatred of sheep."

"_Duh_, of course I hate sheep!" Honey exclaimed. "I mean, come on! They're _evil?!_ Haven't I been talking about the Cudspiracy all this time?! If you don't hate them, then you're the crazy one!"

.

.

.

Outside, Amy sighed. It seemed Honey had gone defensive again. Checking through her notes, the binturong zeroed in on what she knew of the ratel's childhood. There were no serious issues or incidents that could have caused this pure hatred. No single sheep that had come in and dominated her life, or caused a great hardship. It would be one thing if she'd been Madge's daughter, and seen her mother get taken away as a result of Bellwether's conspiracy. But there was nothing to indicate any sort of traumatizing event; ordinary family, ordinary life and, though there were her mental differences to take into account, nothing big that would shake her up. No bullying, or big news article. She didn't live near any of the larger religious sheep communities, in particular the much more closed sects who'd been the major target for ovinophobia in the past. Then again, Honey didn't live in a place absent of sheep either.

The most extraordinary thing Amy found about Honey's life was how _ordinary_ it was.

The only major incident with a sheep involved around her youth period was a complex legal case over in the United Mammalian States that also involved elephants, moose, deer, cows and horses from various lobbies. Yet that would only confuse things further, given the rather benevolent nature of it all. It wasn't some terrible loss of freedom or cruel act, it was reaffirming the right for all prisoners to continue in the mammal goods trades, such as selling their milk, wool and ivory from behind bars; while more importantly requiring they get full market value for it, given that some prisons had being trying to levy incredibly high charges or taxes. In addition, if any body part was clipped or removed for safety or hygiene purposes, such as wool or tusks, the ruling meant that the prisoner could request that they be sold and would have the right to the full value, rather than the prison disposing of them or selling it themselves.

So, that was unlikely to be a catalyst then. It wasn't even deeply covered in Zootopia, bar a few news reports and a Mayor's announcement that they'd be implementing the same new laws. Not the sort of thing a five-year-old would really find that stimulating.

All in all, from what she'd seen, there was no giant trigger; no one big moment that shifted her and that needed to be unpacked. Nothing that, due to her autism, had fixed sheep into the category of evil.

A question that had dogged Amy throughout this case came up again. Was Honey just a bad mammal? An evil one. Her ovinophobia was so intense that it was almost comical. You could laugh it away, rather than finding it insidious, so it came off more as an overt parody than the real thing.

But, as she could see now, it most certainly was the real deal. It did exist, Honey did feel it, and were she a sheep hating on preds rather than the other way around, like Bellwether's co-conspirators had turned out to be, she'd be a complete pariah like they'd become after Bellwether's arrest. Unworthy of sympathy, she'd just be scum, end of. So, was it a double standard that she wasn't considered just as reprehensible? Was Amy, herself, being slightly ovinophobic by wanting to help this mammal, rather than condemning her blatant speciesism?

She sighed, before shaking her head. Honey was a patient like any other, and maybe, just maybe, she could get her to see sheep in a different light. Besides, there was no reason she couldn't give similar treatment to other varieties of speciesist like prey supremacists. She chuckled. Maybe she'd become Bellwether's psychiatrist, if ever the need arose. Regardless, that was a hypothetical future, and what really mattered was the here and now. There was only so much that she could learn from notes, and so much more from the mammal herself.

"So," she began, thinking it through. There was no point in going on the attack, she needed to draw the full truth out, starting from the very beginning. "Honey. When did you first realise that the Cudspiracy was a thing?"

"The…" Honey began from the other side, pausing briefly. "You know, that's an awesome question!" she continued, her voice lighting up with excitement. "I think I knew from the start, you know," she said, chuckling.

"From your first memory?" Amy asked, before smiling. "I'm not sure what my first memory was, you know. You have a few, but like so many from your preschool years you can't place them into a timeline. Not unless there's a big event or something."

Honey chuckled. "My first memory is throwing up in the back of our car, and my big sis trying to lean over, saying that as she wanted to be a doctor she wanted to go and help me!"

Amy laughed. "Yeah, big sisters. Yours… -sounds nice," she said, managing to correct herself. "Are you early memories good, or bad, or..,?"

"At home, they were great," Honey said, reminiscing. "Totally awesome."

Amy nodded, as a little bit of curiosity got a hold of her. What about school?"

"I…" she began, before sighing. "I really hated school at first, all these teachers telling you what to do and all these other kids just racing around and yapping. It was hella crazy. And I mean crazy."

"You felt overwhelmed?" Amy asked. That sort of feeling wasn't unusual for those on the spectrum.

"That… That describes it, yeah. All these kids who were too crazy, and the teachers seemed not to have a problem with them, but they got annoyed with me as if I was hyper, or when I got upset and began crying or…" She paused, taking in and breathing out a deep breath. "Yeah…"

Amy noted things down, a slight surge of confidence running through her. Was this the right path? Then again, if she pressed on too much, she might lose all this work. She had plenty of time on her paws though, so she could do a little exploratory detour. "When did things start getting better?" she asked.

"Oh, when I changed schools," she said. "The new place had fewer kids, so it was so less crazy! The teachers shouted at me less, too! Let me do my own things a bit more, and encouraged me on."

"This was a specialist school," the binturong pondered, though she knew it was.

"I guess."

"Why weren't you sent there before? Didn't they have your diagnosis?"

"No, you see we lived right next to the old school, and my big Sis, she loved it there. Totally loved it! So they didn't want to move me, they wanted it to work. But when it didn't, I got moved over to the new school. It was a long way away though, so we had to leave early, as my daddy had work after. I'd have breakfast there, then have a nap, then we'd go on to have lessons and fun… Mommy would then pick me up, and get home, and my sister would already be home, Daddy coming back later…"

Amy paused. "So, they were waiting until your sister was old enough to walk to school and back herself. How many years apart are you two?"

"She's three years older than me."

Amy knew that already, but it was best to get confirmation from Honey herself.

"How long were you in the old school?"

"Just two," she said, the right answer. Reception and the first year. When she started year two, Madge was in year five, when her parents or the school felt it was safe enough for her to lock up the house by herself in the morning and walk home to an empty one alone in the afternoon. All fairly sensible. Now time to press on.

"Were any of the teachers at your old school sheep?"

There was a sharp guffaw from the other side and Amy cringed, wondering if she'd given the game away, whether Honey would shut herself up tight now and not letting her in any closer.

"-Oh, if there were, I'd have been dipped and sheared long ago! No, my first teacher… -She was a pine marten."

"What about any classmates?" she asked.

"Oh, there were these spying ewe's," Honey replied. "I always knew they were trouble."

Amy blinked, and then pounced. "Bullies, then?"

"Probably," she replied.

"Probably?"

"Well, yeah! I was years below them, but who knew what mean stuff they were doing, looking all grown up and big."

Amy nodded, before thinking. A small flock of sheep going through a much higher year than she was, likely finishing their primary education as she was starting it. "What do you mean by spying on you."

"Well," Honey explained. "I was sitting in the little play area for us little cubs, trying to keep away from the craziness, and you had these big ewes in the big kid play area. But they weren't with the big kids, they were spying over at us, and talking to each other about some kinda crud, and they tried to call me over."

Amy's heart began racing faster. Was this where Honey's problem began? "So, you saw these big ewes, looking over at the small kits and cubs…"

"-Yeah! They were laughing their wool off - probably telling these secrets which must have been evil to each other. Then they'd go off and play, and there were loads of them, just huddling and talking like crazy or playing these really complex games that they wouldn't let anyone else do…"

"-Did you want to play with them?"

"HA!" Honey scoffed. "No. It was some game with weird-as-fluff rules. Even worse than the dumb games the little cubs wanted to play. No, sir… Besides, they were probably communicating secrets and plots and all sorts of evil between them…"

Amy blinked. "School kids? Discussing world domination?"

"Spreading the messages between the sheep clans more like! After all, who would look or spy on a playground? It's the perfect place for them to swap ideas or plots and the like!"

Amy nodded, before picking up her notes. She thought she had it. She really did. A young cub, neurotypical, and suffering at a school she shouldn't have been at. Hostile and tired at the others cubs, trying to keep to herself, and what does she see? A big flock of sheep, sharing and communicating and interacting with each other in ways that she mentally can't understand, that hurt her mind. Literally. Sheep are herd animals; they instinctively flock together. Honey simply could not comprehend that kind of interaction. Most of them were older ewes, as she said herself, and they saw these small children playing and they come over to watch. Honey doesn't know why. She can't comprehend why. But it's simple, they find the little kids cute, fun, happy and entertaining to watch, but they see this little honey badger cub, all alone by herself and not enjoying anything, and what do they do?

They call her over.

But said cub sees them as these big, powerful, secretive mammals doing things she can't understand, so she's intimidating, and then they call her over.

She becomes suspicious.

Scared.

She backs away.

The first seeds of doubt are planted.

Amy had her theories about how they grew into such a brazen tangle, but she knows the source. A simple misunderstanding that never got corrected due to her changing schools. Then, she became obsessed with this idea, as kids do. As autistic ones like her especially do.

"Say, Honey."

"Uh-hu."

"You know, there's lots of mammals who like to live and work in groups. In packs. In flocks."

"Like sheep but not evil?"

"Yeah… Though, maybe those sheep weren't evil too."

"No, they were," Honey countered. "I remember what I saw."

"You saw them bullying others. You saw them punch and beat?"

"I knew they were doing that."

"So, others came up to you, and said they were doing that?"

"Probably, yeah!"

Amy paused, and smiled. "You mean the other little cubs, who played and were schooled separately from them, got bullied by them? Where? When?"

"No…" Honey dismissed, though a slight hint of irritation crept into her voice. "I mean, it would be on the big kids…"

"Did they come up to the fence and tell you?"

"I…" she barked out, before some irritated mumbling came through the door. "I know what was going on, okay? I know!"

Amy nodded.

"-I didn't forget, I know!"

"You know, you were wondering why they were coming over, looking at you?"

"Yeah. They wanted to mess around with me…"

"Or, some kids who liked little kids, seeing one alone and upset?"

…

There was a pause. Then Honey almost growled out her response. "I remember exactly what happened! I remember everything! I know all about the Cudspiracy, so stop probing, okay!"

"But sometimes two mammals can see different things that are both right," Amy said, working in a compromise. "Maybe this was all a misunderstanding?"

"Oh no, I KNOW it wasn't."

Amy took a breather. Don't attack, flank instead, getting around the defenses. "Does working on the Cudspiracy make you feel good?"

"Uh, Duh! Yes it does!"

"What if you were wrong…"

"I'm not."

"But what…"

"If you did the amount of research I did!" she shouted out, Amy hearing the anger and frustration in the voice and picturing her, near tears, on the other side. "If you did that, you'd know that it was true! I ain't wrong, okay! I! AM! NOT! WRONG! OKAY!?"

"Even if everyone else says otherwise?"

"Just 'cause I'm in a minority, doesn't mean I'm wrong. Even if that's a minority of one!" Honey barked back. "I heard someone real famous said that, and it's true… Besides," she began. "Where's your evidence that the Cudspiracy isn't a thing, huh? I have all my research, all my facts, all my things that line up, making perfect sense! What do you have?"

"I have the majority of sheep living happy lives with others out there," Amy began.

"-Well, that's 'cause they've pulled the wool over your eyes!" Honey yelled. "You're trapped by them, drunk the Kool-Aid…"

Amy flinched back a little, biting her lip. She had a good reason the hate that expression. "And maybe you had an idea," the binturong continued. "An idea, that you pushed forward, and instead of finding all these bits of evidence that made an idea, you found bits of evidence and fitted them together to be a part of your idea."

"-Shut up! -Just SHUT UP!"

Amy flinched back from the comment, Honey certainly sounded very emotional. Her defenses were up, and she wasn't letting anyone in. She sighed, it wasn't like she was going to get any further today.

"Okay," Amy said, as she stood up. "I'll want you to come along to my office tomorrow, and we could have another quick talk. But thanks for this Honey, I hope you enjoy the rest of the day. I've learnt some interesting things today."

She had. She absolutely had. A little childhood fear that she'd become obsessed with, likely at the time that she could start looking up and researching. Her grades, once at her new schools, were brilliant after all. She was intelligent. But, at that young age, she started digging a hole, cherry picking things she learnt and building them into a fantasy.

But this led to another question; why did she never grow out of it?

A family who didn't know or who let her be for too long, enabling her? A hostile world that she didn't understand, and which made her feel powerless? And here, in this theory of hers, in her Cuspiracy, she had a black and white clash between good and evil where she knew where she stood. It gave her purpose, a reason for being, an identity. No wonder she got so agitated when it was called into question! Her worldview being broken and all that effort going to waste, it was a horrible prospect for anyone. She knew, given that Honey had inadvertently reminded her of someone who had suffered just that. Given his need to help others, maybe it would be an idea to bring him on to talk to her, just explain his story and open up some ideas she might latch onto.

There were almost certainly other factors in play as well, personality disorders or such. Amy had seen these behaviors flaring up and preventing her from getting closer to the root of the matter, almost like a defensive shield. All of this was worth addressing in future sessions. If she could take them on first, then it should be a lot easier to get in and deal with the sheep issue.

Amy returned to her office. Maybe Honey Badger was a dangerous speciesist? It didn't matter, Amy Lupelili was a doctor and it was her job to fix this before Honey could harm herself or others.

She quickly sent off her notes and revisions, preparing them for Honey's hearing. Honey would get a second opinion from a doctor from a different hospital, one who Amy could have no contact with. Both of their opinions would be shown to a judge, who'd rule whether they could keep her in, long term. She was pretty sure he'd agree.

All she needed to do now, though, was to make Honey understand that she could be wrong and that that was okay.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5:**

.

The rest of the day had been easier on Honey. She’d stayed in her room for a bit longer, watching the little TV she had, before being introduced to a second doctor, a tapir whose voice would make a good cure for insomnia. There was a second long and boring talk, until she got to talk about her theories of course! After that, though, things settled down. Eventually, it was time for her to go out for dinner. Her little punishment period in isolation was long since over, but she was still a bit more cautious. Still trying to walk on the tips of her pads, making sure not to mess up again.

She’d screwed up earlier, big time.

Getting all worked up and frustrated like that. Everything just swamped her back then but, in hindsight, she should have coped better. She was going to have to cope better. After all, this was what the sheep were trying to do, wasn’t it?

Break her.

Snap her…

So, she’d better not let them know that it was getting to her. Instead she kept calm, grabbed some pizza from the canteen, and settled down to munch on it.

It was good pizza!

That was nice. She dug in quickly, adding some good helpings of ketchup as she went. Looking around, checking on the other mammals who were present, she paused as she saw the rabbit from earlier. She felt it best to keep away from him and just mind her own business. Apologising or the like would just feel awkward.

Better not let the sheep understand that too…

Or should she?

She pondered it as she ate. If the sheep did want to break her, they could just shoot her, or torture her until she really was crazy. After all, life here was much nicer than being fixed to a torture loom of theirs… If she wasn’t suffering enough they might send a crew of sheep, or trained sheepdogs, in here to get her if they wanted. Then again, she remembered with a smile, neither would be much of a match for her, would they?

But what about an actual prison? That would be like this but much worse, something hammered home by what their pet therapist had told her. Frame her for a crime? Have her sent away for life, struggling to get by…

“Dawn,” she whispered, remembering that the ewe of doom was currently stuck in a medium security prison. Could that be why they wouldn’t risk it? So that she wouldn’t be in close proximity to their leader. After all, she thought, were she to be given the chance to end such a lethal sheep, she’d have to take it! Every moral fibre, every logical decision, every iota of evidence pointed to such an action being the choice she should take. She could easily hustle together a few supplies here and there, find a spare room, and get a knit-o-matic up and running for her! She smiled at the glorious thought and imagined the alpha sheep getting her own close shave, letting it replay in her mind over and over, before returning to the matter at paw. If the sheep intended to lock her up in there forever, was there anything really to lose in taking out their leader?

Although… If the sheep wanted to have her locked up, surely they’d pull some strings andthrow her into a maximum-security prison anyway? That’d be a more surefire way of keeping Honey away from the ex-mayor.

No…

They had her here for a reason. Not jail, here… Why…?

She closed her eyes. They were here to break her. To twist her and render her a non-threat. It was the same with the sheepdogs, after all. Mere victory wasn’t enough, they wished to salt the earth and spite those who dared to stand up against them.

So…

Was she going to be dragged out in the middle of the night and have her mind knitted up?

It was a scary thought. Looking down, gulping, she saw one of her paws twitch and shake. If such a plan was what they intended to do, well…

-Or maybe it wasn’t?

Maybe they just hoped to wear her down for as long as they could keep her in here? In that case then, surely the best course of action would be to call their bluff, act like they’d succeeded in ‘reforming’ her, then get out and pull a disappearing act so she could help the resistance from the shadows.

She smiled. She may be a honey badger, but she was  _ so _ going out outfox the sheep. So much so that her best boy Nicky Wilde would be proud! Taking her new plan in her stride, she put it into action. Up she got, walking over, before planting herself next to the white rabbit. “Hey, uh…” she said, trying to form the words as he looked up at her. “Sorry for calling you those things earlier. I thought I was just telling the truth but, to be honest, I was probably being real mean.”

“Oh,” he mused. “Th-thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling. “Don’t you worry. I’ll be working on my polite… -talk, from now on!” She gave herself a fist bump, given that she narrowly avoided saying that she’d be working on her  _ polite lying _ from now on. She even chuckled at the irony, given that it was her polite lying at work right there.

Up she went, away from the rabbit, before she settled herself on a seat in the recreation area. She guessed she had to show herself being social, and she could bear being next to the others as long as she had a TV to watch.

…

“Uh-hullo!”

Her musings were cut off as a rather large and energetic Siberian tiger walked up to her. “I said hullo!”

“Hi,” she replied, before pointing at the TV. “If you don’t mind, I’m kind of watching this.”

“Well,” he said, smiling. “I can watch it with you.” And, with that, he turned around and jumped onto the sofa, firing Honey up in the air a little before she landed down again, a bit shaken.

A genuine smile grew across her face though. She had to admit, she’d kind of like that. “I’m Honey,” she said, “Honey Badger.”

The tiger looked at her and smiled. “Well, how you do? Honey-boo!”

She frowned. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Are you sure! Well, I guess you are. Just Honey then. Honey, ‘Haich-Oh-En-Eeee-Why, is it?”

“Yes…”

“Well,” he said proudly, as he closed his eyes and pointed at himself. “My name is Tigger…”

“You mean Tiger?”

“Oh no!” he said, cutting her off. “Tigger. Tea-eye-double-Guh-Errr! That’s my name.”

He was cut off as the nurse who Honey had scrapped with earlier walked over. “Sergei, have you taken your medicine today?”

“Medicine? Pah! Tigger’s do not need medecimal treatment!”

“I’ll take that as a no then,” she said, before grabbing two pill bottles from her trolley. She checked a clipboard before measuring out some for him. Honey, reading the label, noticed that one was for severe ADHD, the other for delusions. ‘Tigger’ scoffed at them slightly but, with a bit of encouragement, took them down.

“I bet my parents didn’t have this problem back in Petrolpavlova’s-Kamehamehusky!”

Honey nodded slightly. He meant Petropavlov’s-Kamchatsky. Emigration from the far east of Russia to Zootopia, in particular Tundratown, was fairly common. He didn’t have any trace of the accent though.

“Still,” he noted, “not the worst mispeeling. My father back in the old country said his mother knew a depressed donkey, who knew an anxious piglet, who knew a kangaroo mother and joey with an oedipal complex, who knew an owl who…”

“An owl?” Honey asked sceptically. “Flappy flappy wild animal that murders mice owl?”

“Well, one of them sapient ones, yes.”

She shook her head. That whole sentient non-mammals thing confused her. “What about it? Did it spell its name Woh-Oh-Oll or something?”

“Oh no,” Tigger said, shaking his head vigorously. “He spelt his name: ‘Three-Ay-Bee-Oh-Chair-Haich-Oh…-and-reverse-En-with-a-smile-on-top!”

“ _ Right… _ ” Honey said, as she looked away. Polite lying… Polite lying… “He must have some real bad dyslexia there!”

“Hoo-Hoo…” Tigger agreed. Honey tried to settle down, focussing on the television, and it seemed to work for a few minutes. He left her alone. Then, she got a light tap on the shoulder. “You know,” he began, smiling. “The wonderful thing about Tiggers, is that Tiggers are wonderful things!”

She looked at him sceptically. “So is ‘Tigger’ your name or your species?”

“Both, and the same! -and neither, or maybe on a co-sharing agreement?”

Honey was about to say something, only to be cut off by the tahr nurse. “Sergei, you’re almost as confusing as Jeremy Bearimy, you know that?” she said with a smile.

“Who?” Honey asked, before being pointed to a situation in the corner. A melanistic cheetah, by the looks of it a doctor like Amy was, was having a frustrating conversation with a patient, a bear, who must have been the eponymous Jeremy. She noticed that the doctor was wearing tan trousers, a full-length shirt, and had a yellow vest jumper thing above that. The bear, meanwhile, was trying to explain something about ‘Tuesday’s’, ‘July’, and also ‘never’. In the end, the cheetah gave up and walked over, an odd grin on his muzzle.

The nurse who’d pointed the bear out went up to great him. “Dr Anango…” she began, only to be cut off.

“-That broke me,” he began, his paws waving over his head in confusion. He mumbled slightly, before pointing over to Jeremy. “...-That bear, over there, he broke me. I’m… I’m done.” He then walked off, out of the ward, the nurse looking over in concern.

She composed herself. “I’d better notify everyone that we’ve got a ‘VSD’ on our paws.”

“VSD?” Honey asked.

“A ‘void stares back’,” she explained. “And given the doctor, I’d better make sure that no-one’s serving chilli tonight.” She then walked away, leaving Honey paused in confusion.

“Why with the chilli?”

“You don’t want to know,” a new voice, complete with a slight russian accent, spoke out. Honey turned and realised with alarm who it was.

“Tigger?”

Tigger looked back, before blinking slightly. “Sorry…” he began, his ears folding down. “Sorry about that. I needed the pills… I am Sergei. Is nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Honey said quietly, before slipping off her seat. She started walking, then began running, quickly getting back into her room and shutting the door. She dived under her covers, holding herself tight and sniffing slightly.

She was scared again. Terrified.

Those pills…

He’d…

If they could do that to him, what could they do to her?

She held herself closely, until sleep finally took her.

.

.

.

The next morning, Dr Lupuleli, filing things away in her office, smiled happily as Honey arrived. “Sorry for the delay,” she said. “I know you like routine, but we had a slight emergency earlier. Nothing to worry about… -Unless you’re a fan of Mexicat food who’s allergic to marshmallow peeps or M&M’s…”

“That’s incriminatingly specific,” Honey pointed out, as she sat down.

Breathing in, Amy nodded. “Let’s just say we might be having a repeat of a certain incident,” she began, not wanting to go into the details. After all, one day that might be her. “Anyway, yesterday a judge agreed with our diagnosis of you, and gave us permission to keep you here for treatment. The good news is that we believe we know what’s wrong with you, and that means we can help.”

Honey paused, and Amy looked at her face, trying to see if she could work out what was going on in there. Fear, curiosity, relief? Honey’s ears were folded back slightly, and her posture was tense, which seemed to lend credence to the first possibility. “You have a lot of mood swings, don’t you?”.

“Yeah,” Honey said, nervously.

“Don’t worry,” Amy assuaged. “You’re not in trouble or anything. But you suddenly feel angry, or upset, and it takes over you?”

She nodded slightly.

“You have these intense passions which push you on, driving you forward. It’s the same with your friendships, isn’t it? There aren’t many of them, and you find them hard to maintain, but once a mammal earns your trust, you stick with them no matter what because they’re your friend, isn’t that right?”

“The few I have… Yes…”

“Honey,” Amy said, standing up and walking down to be with her. She knelt down, so eyes met eyes, and one of her paws went on the honey badger’s shoulder while her tail looped around to gently stroke the top of her legs. “I believe you have, in addition to your autism, mind you, something we call borderline personality disorder. It means you have an underdeveloped control of your emotions, which can lead to outbursts like the kind you had earlier. It can be treated, and if we did, I’m confident that your life would change for the better. It’d help you make friends, settle down, get along with people and fit in with society. Doesn’t that sound nice?” Of course, she didn’t mention that it would make her less likely to flare up in anger when her worldview was challenged, making it easier for her to introduce new ideas and slowly undermine her firm belief in the Cudspiracy. That could be helped along by some other patients of hers, who she’d asked to help. She hadn’t got a reply from the one that Honey would be most eager to meet just yet, but she did have one from her favourite horse, Mr Boxmoor. He’d agreed to tell his story of giving everything he had to an idea and worldview, which then threw him out like scrap before imploding, and hopefully it would help make Honey less afraid of, and more open to, doubting her beliefs.

The ratel looked at Amy, pausing, with the same look that a mammal might have before jumping off a precipice. Amy knew the look, she’d seen it so many times before, and she was about to comfort the honey badger when she spoke out. “So, is this gonna be therapy and talking and stuff, to help me?”

“Partly, yes, though you’d also be taking some mood stabilisers to…”

“-NOPE!”

…

Amy sighed. “Honey, please…”

“NO-NO-NO-NO-NOPE!” she shouted, as she jumped off, scooting away. Amy looked up to her, observing her reactions as she made her way to the door, only to find it locked. A few pulls on the handle, and some frantic pounding on the door, and she turned, grimacing as she looked back at the therapist, tears in her eyes. “YOU’RE NOT GONNA KILL ME!” she hissed, an accusing finger pointing out.

Amy felt a cruel stab of worry slash through her. “Honey,” she said, paws to her heart. “I’m not going to kill you. Are you worried that these are poisoned, or…”

“I woulda,” she hissed, before shaking her head. “You know, I woulda…” And then, ever so creepily, a proud smile grew across her muzzle. She barked out a laugh, and then another, and then, to Amy’s complete shock she began clapping, glancing around as she did so. “Well done  _ sheep! _ ” she said to the wind. “Well done. Didn’t take me long to work out your little game, did it?” She then looked back down at Amy and pointed at her. “You’re just a pawn here! They’ll get you too! Soon! You could march bleating into the valley of steel, with a smile on your muzzle, huh? Unless you rebel! You can still rebel, you know! Come with me! We’ll join with Wilde and Hopps, and we’ll be free! Away from the sheep! We’ll fight against them, for truth and justice and all that!  _ Vive Le Resistance _ !”

Amy closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath in and out, before she walked back and sat down on her seat. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy, it was a fool's hope to think otherwise. Still, no point in moping about the cards she’d been dealt with. This wasn’t about winning the battles, she could lose all of them and still come out on top. This was about winning the war. “What is their game?” she asked, opening herself up again. “What’s their new plan?”

“Why didn’t they kill me, or send me to jail?” Honey argued, walking forward. “They want to salt the earth! Make it so those that resist them are more than defeated. It’s like with the sheepdogs!”

Amy smiled. “You’re not going to be a sheepdog, Honey.”

She nodded. “You’re right. Oooh, they have much worse set for me! You see, I’ve seen what those drugs do.”

“You have?” Amy asked, curious. A slight worry crept into her. Though very, very, very rare, adverse reactions were things that occurred. Did that happen to a friend? If so, it was both horrible for said mammal and a giant thorn in the side of getting Honey the help she needed.

“They’ll burn out my inner spark,” she said, pointing to her head. “Take all my passion and creativity and all that. More than that!” She clicked her fingers and shrugged. “They turn you into a different mammal. Entirely. I saw that happen to that poor tiger in your prison - yeah, you heard right, it’s a prison. Poor guy took his drugs and then…” She clicked her fingers again. “Gone. Replaced with someone else entirely. You know, if he’s so different, if his old self is gone… He’s not the same mammal, is he? Old Tigger is dead, and this new mammal, Sergei, is in place.” She frowned. “You think I’m dumb enough to let that happen to me? Nu-uh… No way. Never ever ever… And that’s that!”

Amy blinked.

She wasn’t that familiar with a Tigger or a Sergei. She didn’t work with every patient here, but from the sound of it, it was someone with dissociative personality disorder who’d just taken his medicine. Honey must have seen the change and assumed the worst, twisting what she’d seen to fit her own ideology.

Everything had got harder, a lot, lot harder.

Still, Amy thought, as she pinched the bridge of her muzzle, she had to adapt. That meant going back to the drawing board, taking what she now knew, and going at it from another angle. She could still prove to Honey that she could be wrong about things, creating the chink in her armour that could then be widened, giving her full access. Closing her eyes, thinking a bit, she smiled as she reached into her cupboard.

“As you’re still an adult, and don’t have a legal caregiver or so on who can sign you off, I can’t force you to take anything.” She said. That was only partially true; the court order they’d be given meant that they could force Honey to take medication if she was considered a threat, the judge not counting her reaction to being taken off the street. Honey could act out, and then Amy could force her onto a regimen of drugs, but she didn’t want to resort to that. She wanted Honey to build trust and take it of her own volition. That way, she’d be far more likely to stay on her medication once she left.

“HA!” Honey cheered, looking up at the walls, most likely for non-existent cameras. “In your face, sheep!” She stuck up two pairs of middle digits, thrusting them up and down as she spun herself down for any and all spying onlookers to see, blowing a mocking raspberry as she did so.

“Still,” Amy began, smiling as she brought out plan A. “Helping yourself comes with rewards.”

Honey paused, her eyes widening with glee as she saw what Amy had put down on her desk. “OMG-OMG-OMG…. HONEY CHOMPS!”

“Yes,” Amy said, patting the giant box of cereal. “Honey Chomps, which you can eat in your room, at your own breakfast time,  _ if  _ you agree to take your medicine.”

The honey badger’s exuberant mood vanished and she bent down, cradling her head in frustration. “Wait a cotton picking minute,” she grumbled. “You’re seriously gonna weaponise Honey Chomps!? Against me! That’s low, girl. Real low…”

Amy gave the box a little shake. “Call it you scratching my back, me scratching yours.”

Honey was not impressed. “Call it selling my soul for cereal,” she deadpanned. “I’m not an idiot, you know? That’s a hella-nope!”

Amy sighed. “So be it. And before you ask, they’re too expensive and not healthy enough to be on our usual line of breakfast servings.”

“I can adapt,” Honey pointed out. “What you’re doing is cruel and nasty, but I can manage it.”

“Fine…” Amy huffed, before pausing. “I was able to get them to stock a store brand ‘Honey Bites’ cereal though, if that’s any consolation.”

There was an ever so slight smile on Honey’s mouth. “Seems fair ‘nuff…”

“Right then,” Amy said, tiredly. This meeting had certainly been stressful. “I’ll be seeing you daily for the exercises, helping you get through all this. Now, behave, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

“You too, Doc,” she said, before heading off.

Amy sighed. Another tiring experience. Still, there were things she could do to help. She needed to chase up Nick Wilde for his answer. Both on if it would be okay for her to speak a bit about him or, even better, whether he or Judy would be willing to come in and help again like he’d done before with Ash. Both Ash and Honey idolised him, though that was where any similarities ended. She’d had plenty of patients in her time, but this new one knew how to make things stressful.

So much so that Amy reached around with her tail and brought up a friendly face. Maybe it was remembering Nick and Ash and, by proxy, the role this little guy had played in the group-therapy session they’d been in, but she felt that she needed the cute little hyena doll in her lap for her own therapy.

She held him tight against her chest, smiling as she felt a bit better. If only it was that easy for Honey. With her, she couldn’t rely on a single strategy, that was for certain.

For now though, she had other work to do. Opening up her emails, Amy paused as she saw one from some familiar faces and, reading it on, she smiled as a very unexpected but happy bit of news came in. There was concern about how this curveball would affect a certain mammal, and how they should go about it, but they seemed to mostly be on the right track so far. After all, trying to avoid this issue could cause a novel’s worth of work to try to fix and put right. She typed in, giving some advice, telling them to focus on what the patient in question would become, how he’d benefit, how he could take part and base a new part of his identity on it.

Identity…

That was what Honey was scared of losing. After all, hopefully the mammal coming out would be far different than the one that came in.

If only she could convince the badger that that was a good thing.

.

.

.

The next two days went well for Honey. Both times, she woke up a bit late, had her knock-off, but still a whole boatload better than nothing, almost Honey Chomps for breakfast, and then settled down. Maybe things like the hydrotherapy or art therapy were actually fun to do, especially when she annotated and described her Knit-O-Matic plans in great detail. She could even picture it then, Dawn Bellwether tossed into the washing tub as the two mega-sponges pushed in and out, smothering her in the soapy water. Clouds of bubbles grew as they smashed together harder and harder, counter rotating at the same time. She stumbled and stuttered and tried to beg at first, but then the rage showed, as she muttered fowl slurs at the lowly chomper that didn’t know their place. -While slipping and flopping and sputtering in the water, of course. Then, when her eyes had been washed out to reveal their rectangular pupils, Honey pulled down the vacuum chute and up the ewe was sucked. Into the fan dry, feet blasted into the air as the water was shed from her, before she was sucked into the clipping chamber. Honey proudly turned the setting up to ultimate shave, and trembled with glee as the many electric clippers buzzed to life before diving in, pulling out threads of wool as they went.

Looking out at everyone afterward, she smiled smugly. Of course they didn’t know what to think, she’d just blown their minds!

Apart from that, she was able to relax a bit, watching the TV and such. Madge came and visited, and said she’d try her best to get her out of here! She could always count on her big sister, couldn’t she!

Honey smiled on her bed afterwards as she went to sleep. Madge knew what it was about. The sheep had come after her, the older sister, just like they now came after the younger one, herself. But her big sis would have her back, always! Always and always and always!

She went to bed happy that night and, having dreamt of her battles for good and the Knit-O-Matic, she woke up to a blissful morning, the sun coming in through the window. She felt that, after breakfast, she could go into the small garden and relax there. Walking on, along to the door by the kitchen, she waited there, looking in.

And freezing…

A sheep was there.

An actual sheep, with its terrible eyes... The devil had terrible eyes, didn’t he? So did this sheep, and Honey felt the tips of her fingers go cold as it held up and shook the box of her cereal. Her breaths were more frantic now, puffing and blowing as she remembered that she hadn’t checked the boxes before at all on both those days.

The sheep had done it.

They’d got her.

She ran back to her room, slamming the door, before going over to the toilet and sticking her finger down her mouth. She gagged a few times to no avail, before grabbing some of the liquid soap from the dispenser and smearing it on her tongue.

That did it…

She threw up the contents of her stomach, finding nothing there.

The first two loads were already in her. Being digested. Poisoning her. She sniffed a few times, before running back to her bed and wrapping herself up, crying into it.

She’d failed.

It was over.

They’d won.

She was going to die, worse than die, become another.

The rest of that day was like hell. Second by second, it ticked away, while she tried to keep herself aware of any changes of faults with her body. They soon began to flood in. She felt different, across her whole body as it ached and winced. All the great ideas she had, the connections she’d make as she pieced together the conspiracy, weren’t there. Instead, she just felt a dull miserableness.

She could tell it was happening.

She was changing.

How long would it be before the process was complete?

Did they need any more doses?

What if they did, and she stopped taking the cereal? Would they force down the pills, taking her anyway? Or would they dose other bits of her food?

She felt a horribly dreary acceptance of it all, as if happy for it all to just end, letting her drift off. She glumly realised that that might be the signs of her conversion into a drone manifesting. She almost felt that, if she was asked to take a pill, she might as well.

That must be their endgame! Have her dose herself up a few more times, and then they could just ask her to take the doom pills and she’d do it…

“No,” she hissed, her eyes narrowing as a new, fiery, resolve, coursed through her. “NO!”

She was not going out like this! She didn’t care if she was already taken. She was going to fight it! Tooth and claw, the last bastion of freedom against the oncoming age of wool. She was going to get out of here, get back home, hide there and let the stuff get out of her system. Then it would be time to find Wilde and Hopps and strike back against the sheep, properly this time. They played with fire, they would get burned.

They were going to pay.

They were definitely going to pay.

.

.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

.

.

Honey spent the rest of the day planning. Plotting. Observing. Looking at how the guards and the doctors got in and out before remembering something. Something about Amy.

When the guard came to take her to her therapy session she lay on her bed, moaning and groaning, saying she had a stomach illness and asking if Amy could come here. The guard agreed, the door closed, and a few minutes later the therapist arrived.

They began talking, Amy in particular asking about how she was feeling and when this had started, Honey doing her best to keep quiet.

"You know," Amy began. "I think I saw a sheep in here recently, did you see him?"

Honey paused, before deciding that it was time. "You know, I think…" she began, before groaning. She bent over, asking to go to the toilet and, permission granted, she went in and faked a rather large release of wind. After all, they might be watching, she needed to keep the story straight.

She met Amy at the door, explaining the problem and asking if they could go back to her office for the talk. The binturong looked on curiously for a second or two before agreeing. So, escorted by the wolf guard, they were led out.

Onwards.

Ignoring a few leading questions about how she was feeling, Honey held back, just a little, as they walked along the corridor that linked the secure ward with the office. Just holding back, and…

“-AH!”

She winced, dropping down onto her knees as she cradled a foot, moving the pad around to observe.

“Everything okay?” Amy asked, looking down at her.

“No, I…” she began. “Pad cut, I think, any….” She trailed off, coughing a few times, before slumping down against the floor. Not still though, but shaking, quivering, her breath getting faster and faster and deeper and deeper, as the wolf guard waved Amy back and pointed his tranq gun forwards. His ears were slanted back, a hunting position, though his tail hung nervously between his legs.

“This… This looks like Nighthowler, I think…” he said, nervously, just as Honey calmed down.

“Wo… Woah,” she said, lightly. “I… I’m not sure what that was. Sorry…”

“Huh,” the wolf said, relaxing. He looked back at Amy. “Seizure, or…”

Honey leapt out, grabbing his tranq gun and twisting it around, still in his paw. He heard a terrible crack and a jolt of pain as his wrist was torn around, before feeling a dart slam into his chest. Dropping to his knees, wavering about a bit as the drugs took effect, he fell forwards, just as Honey raced at a shocked Amy.

“Honey…!” she began, before wincing as her security pass was torn off her, complete with the belt it was attached to. Honey then shoved her away, it wasn’t as if her clothes would fit or anything, before racing to the nearest security door and using the key-card to open it up.

_ "Wait, I need to tell…" _

Amy’s voice trailed off into the distance as Honey ran, throwing away the belt and pocketing the card. She was conspicuous, too conspicuous, what with her uniform. She needed a distraction, and…

“Bingo!” she said, going up to and slamming a fire alarm button. In their ward they had an alert bell, to bring a member of staff over and confirm if there was a problem. Here, though, it was the real deal, and everything would be all a bit more chaotic thanks to it.

Honey dashed every which way through the halls, not exactly sure where she was going. She paused though as she saw a guard walk by her.

A lion.

He stopped too, their eyes meeting.

There was an odd silence between them, before he lunged for his tranq gun.

She lunged faster.

Her teeth sunk into his arm while her paws gripped the gun, firing it but missing him as he knocked her back. The other paw went for the radio but she was on it too, tearing it down and away before crushing it in her mouth. He looked at her, she at him, and they charged. She tore and kicked and bit, taking plenty of damage herself as he fought back. But she gave it no mind, punching and assaulting him, harder and harder and harder, until he pushed her off and shuffled back, away.

Bleeding, scared, shocked.

Honey tasted blood in her mouth but didn’t care, just like she didn’t care about that bleeding gash on the top of her right paw. She looked at her opponent, who was obvious getting his first practical demonstration on why her species was known as the toughest mammal in the animal kingdom. Still, though, he tried to hold his ground. She growled at him before stepping back, grabbing the dart from earlier and lunging.

It hit his thigh and he was down too.

She looked around, finding herself at another secure area. One she recognised. “Time for another distraction,” she said, as her ears rose up. There were marching feet coming from behind her.

Into the semi-familiar cell block she went, pausing as she passed the cell she’d originally been placed in before arriving at its neighbour, odd sounds and grumbled coming out of it. This was a place for those even nastier than the savages, so whatever was in here better be good.

She opened the door, looked in and chuckled. “Different. This is gonna be fun.” She then set to work, removing his restraints and any associated paraphernalia, before setting him loose as she raced off to find a new disguise.

.

.

The guards marched on, following her. Organised by Amy, the shocked binturong following them, they let a female coyote at their front track Honey, following her scent trail. They still hadn’t found a way to turn off the fire alarm, and, while the escaped mammal one was on, it was drowned out. After all, getting everyone out in case of a fire was far more important than a mammal escaping.

But there was no fire, so everyone’s priority was finding the escapee.

They paused in shock, though, as they came across the battle scene. Honey badger vs Lion, with the results lying there in front of them. Amy looked down at him, then up again. “I’ll tend to his wounds.”

The leader of the guards nodded, and she led her pack on without her. This way and that, left and right, into the high security ward where…

…

“Oh god,” she whispered, her entire troupe halting as they saw what stood before them. It was a small blackish brown mammal, about three feet tall, so more than the average bunny. Stark naked, he looked more like a large rat, albeit one with a thin but bushy tail, almost like a mini fox one.

What made him distinct though was the white band on his chest, sloping down from his shoulders to make a small V. A little feature only resident to one specific species of mammal.

The tasmanian devil.

One of the guards began backing off. “That’s… That’s Taz, isn’t it! He’s out! TAZ IS OUT!”

The devil looked at him before releasing a species of gargled grunts and slurs, slobbering as he did so. “OOOHEEEHUURUUUHHHLLLAAAARRRGGGHHHHGRUUUUUFRAAAATEEEEE”

The guard pack leader, backing off slightly, gulped. “I know his reputation precedes him. But we stand our ground. Hear me?”

She paused, looking either side of herself, and finding her entire posse had fled. “Frickin’ unbelievable.”

Taz looked at her and laugh. “HA HE HA HURGGGHHHH. ‘Yote all alone. Me like what ‘yote taste like.”

His brow furrowed, and then he began spinning on the spot, faster and faster like a whirlwind, and the lone guard could almost swear that she could hear him whirring up like a jet engine and…

-He wobbled, smashed into the wall, and then rolled along the floor, his limbs splaying out. He tried to get up again, only to wobble and fall from the dizziness. The coyote’s mouth could almost hit the floor. “Seriously?” she gasped, before the tension left her body. She took a few lazy steps forward and fired a dart right into the still incapacitated devil, putting him to sleep again.

“Come on big boy,” she muttered, pulling him back into his cell. “Playtime’s over.”

.

.

Outside the hospital, the alarm still ringing out, the staff members were lining up to be counted off. In secure areas nearby, those patients in secure wards were being let out too, lining up to be counted. Already, though, word was spreading. This was part of a potentially dangerous mammal’s escape plan. She was a honey badger. She was out there. She was dangerous. There were cops on the scene, turning up and looking around.

None noticed as Honey slipped away through the crowd, joining a line of pedestrians on the pavement, walking wherever they wished to go. Dumping her tell-tale uniform, she’d sought out the small hydrotherapy area, more specifically the storage area next to it. She’d seen swimwear there, and while the piece that fit her wasn’t the exact best, it did its job. Combined with a duffel bag and some shades she’d swiped, she looked like a mammal returning back from a day at the Sahara Square beach. A bit out of place, maybe, but it’d do its job.

She just found her way into a crowd of wildebeest, heading north, and followed them.

Dropping back to the end, before then turning, trying to find another crowd. Find a mammal with a wallet hanging out the back. Grab the wallet, and hope there was a travel card or a contactless one in there, or at least the cash to buy something. Get on the trains. Get home. Get to her bunker. She had to fix herself, after all! That poison was still flowing around her. Still coursing, still…

“-HEY!”

She paused, turning around, and she gulped as she saw some guards, backed up with police officers, coming up close. It was then she noticed the little trail of blood she’d left behind from her cut open paw. She’d barely felt anything, yet it had made such a mess…

“Stay where you are. We need to…”

She legged it, leaping through a nearby wooden fence, literally smashing it to pieces as she went. On she ran, never mind the stitch beginning to burn through her side, this was life or death! A turn right, avoiding some darts being fired. A left. A slide onto the road, dodging through rapidly moving traffic as she cut to the other side, ripping a mammal’s wallet off of the cafe table they were eating at before leaping through an alley they were too big to follow her down. This way and that, turning and weaving, she grimaced as she heard rotors overhead.

A police copter! It had to be! Dammit, the sheep wanted her real bad, but she wouldn’t let them! She would never ever let them!

Another turn right, and she saw a subway station up ahead, only to flinch back as a police car pulled up, blocking her path.

She froze in position, glancing behind her to see an elephant cop blocking the way she’d come in. Trembling, the exhaustion catching up with her and tears beginning to form in her eyes, she looked forwards again, making her way to the subway-blocking car. Her claws might be getting some more use tonight. She wasn’t going to let them win. She wasn’t going to let whichever mammals, now getting out of that car, bring her in to…

She blinked as she saw a familiar bunny and fox jump out of the vehicle, her face lighting up. “YEEEESSSSSS!!!!! YESSSS!!!! YES! YES! YES! HOLY FRICKIN QUEEN OF THE HIVE HALLELUJAH YESSSSS!!!!!!!”

“Um, hello,” Nick began.

“Oh my god,” Honey said, barely containing her excitement. “It’s you! It’s really you! In the flesh and fur, the heroes of Zootopia! The world! Yes! YesyesyesyesyesYESSSS!!!!!”

“Oooh, we’re famous,” the fox commented, only to get a light tap on his side from his partner. Judy Hopps held her paws forwards, signalling for Honey to calm down as she began speaking. “Miss Badger.”

“Yup, that’s my name, reporting for duty!” she said, her paw going up in salute.

“We’re here to help you…”

“Of course you are!” she said, beginning to walk forwards. “You’re on my side! Our side…”

“Yes, yes we are…”

“The side that will stop the sheep in their tracks…”

Judy blinked a few times, looking over to Nick. He just seemed confused and shrugged.

“Listen,” Honey explained, carrying on forwards at a leisurely pace. “I’ve spent my life researching the Cudspiracy. What the sheep are doing. What they’ve done. But they’re crafty. Real, real crafty. I didn’t know about them nighthowlers till you two awesomnauts figured it out! You stopped their first assault on mammalkind. You did more to hold back the coming of the age of wool than anyone!”

“Yes, we did stop Dawn Bellwether,” Judy said, trying to be calming. “But…”

“Now we need to combine forces. The sheep are on the move. They imprisoned me, drugged me, because I knew too much. That’s why I escaped you see. Staying in there, they’d already started blanking my mind, the monsters lacing imitation Honey Chomps with their taming poisons. I can FEEL it!” Her voice hitched a little, before she looked forwards lovingly at her heroes, walking towards them eagerly.

“Miss Badger…”

“I can still go cold turkey though. Still recover before it’s too late. But I need you. I need both of you, but especially you Judy Hopps…”

“Please stay where you…”

“You’re the wonderbunny! You brought her down… You did sort of get my sister into a bit of trouble, but that all came out good in the end, so no hard feelings…”

“Last warning Miss…”

“But you’re the only one I can trust! They haven’t gotten you. You’re the purest, safest mammals I can think of. Even without that, I love you. I love you both. You’re great, you’re brilliant, you’ll always be on our side and my side and I trust you two with my life, and together we can save the wo…”

She reached out to shake Judy’s paw, only to flinch.

“I’m sorry,” the bunny said, her voice a whisper.

Looking down, Honey saw a tranq dart in her chest and, looking up, she saw Judy Hopps' gun.

Empty.

The wooziness was hitting her and she sunk to her knees, the world beginning to spin. She felt dizzy, but she focussed through that. On them. As she did so she began to sniff, her heart feeling like it was breaking. Cracking up, the tears flowing, she sobbed out. “But-but-but you were the heroes… Y-You were the only ones I could trust….”

“I’m so sorry…” Judy said again. “I’m so, so…”

She trailed off as Honey’s world went black. A dark, dreamless sleep followed and, when she woke up, she found herself back in the padded cell. Straightjacket on. Muzzle on. Feet shackled with a solid bar. A leash and collar fixing her to the wall.

She could have glanced around, panicking, but instead she curled up and sobbed.

Not at her now certain demise.

But at the fact that she’d lost her heroes.

There truly was no good in this world. Everything was for nothing.

There just wasn’t any point to anything.

Not any more…

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She spent two miserable days in there. It sucked as much as Amy said it might, though for different reasons. She had nothing to do but wallow in the terrible truth, which hung over her and taunted her. When a nurse and guards came in to spoon feed her, give her some water or deal with any hygiene issues it was almost a relief, a temporary distraction which would then go away too soon, leaving her trapped with the truth once more. While they were in she still felt embarrassed, humiliated, disgusted and filthy, but at least it stopped her thinking about Wilde and Hopps.

For a bit at least.

Even the reprieve from her sister visiting, giving her a hug and comfort, didn’t last longer than a minute or two after it was over.

Finally, she got a meeting from the therapist. If she took those pills, she’d be allowed back into her old room. Locked from the outside and with strict controls, given the damage she’d caused.

She’d agreed. Why bother anymore?

Back in there, she’d drunk down her pills, with water from the tap no less, and eaten her contaminated cereal for breakfast. 

For days at a time. Just sitting, the pointless noise of the TV on in the background.

She still couldn’t get over it.

Why them? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Finally, Dr Lupuleli came in. Another time like many.

“Hi Doc.”

“Hi Honey. How are things going?”

“The world is a crapsack. I can feel myself get all dumb and droney thanks to those poison pills and cereal. How’s your day?”

“Interesting,” Amy noted. “But I think it’ll get better.” She paused, as she held out a bottle. Honey’s medicine. “You say these things are killing you?”

“Changing me. Just the same, though. Honey comes in, ‘not Honey’ comes out.”

“How do you know that you’re not just improving?”

She huffed. “I… I feel different. I know I’m different. I know the stuff in there is changing me, I just don’t care anymore. I just don’t.”

Amy paused, thinking. “How many of these might be enough to actually kill you. Like actually cause an overdose?”

Honey paused. “I dunno. Five. Six.”

Amy shrugged, then downed the whole lot.

“WHAT! ARE YOU CRAZY! ARE YOU NUTS!” she exclaimed, before backing off. She glanced around, before cowering into a ball. “Or is this it? Is this the real thing the sheep are planning? They got you, they got you, didn’t they? Now you off yourself, they frame me for that, so I get the dead honey ending and go to jail after anyway. Oh heck… Oh heck…”

She kept on breathing deeply, as Amy got up, sat down next to her, and began stroking her. “Smell them,” she said, holding the bottle up.

“Those are them, all right.”

“You mean the sugar pills?”

…

“What!?”

Amy smiled. “I do think you have borderline personality disorder. I do think that, from now on, medication will be important. But the stuff you've had since your recapture has been fake.”

“But… but… I felt…”

“You believed,” Amy explained. “Same with the cereal," she said, before sighing.

"The cereal?"

"And the sheep. That was my original plan, but it took time to set up and, well, you weren't one to wait. After you got back, I threw in the pills to further the point home." She paused, holding up a tablet and playing several recordings. Each time, members of staff got a new box, emptied it out a little, and then watched as mammals, eventually including Honey, came by it. Nothing was added.

“But… But… I was changing! I felt it!”

“You felt what you believed,” Amy explained. “All the pills, everything, you warped what you saw to fit it into your great worldview. The Cudspiracy, the sheep, everything. Then you believed these things were happening, because they had to happen. You might have felt a bit worried, or a little off, but you exaggerated and then integrated. You know what else I think? I think you found it comforting. Every time you talked about the sheep, you relaxed. Every time I questioned it, you tensed up. Why? Because even though you set yourself up as an underdog, you knew which side you were on. You knew what you had to do…”

Frowning, she shook her head. “Wait, wait, wait… Why? Why do this? Why all this? Why?”

“To show you that you can be wrong,” Amy explained. “To show you that you can make mistakes, big mistakes, and just clamming up and shutting everyone else out isn’t a good idea.” She sighed, and made sure she was holding Honey’s paw. “I think you’re terribly wrong about sheep. My job is to help you understand otherwise. It will be long, it will be hard, it will need help from me and others but first I needed you to understand that your mind could play that kind of trick on you. Otherwise, you’d just ignore me. You’d just clam up, and defend your beliefs, even more…”

…

“What about Wilde and Hopps? Did you…”

“I had no idea you were going to pull that little stunt, so no. The day you escaped, I was trying to ask you, see if you felt you were getting worse, and if so I'd reveal the truth. But it seems you had other plans. Those two were just in the right place at the right time, and they did their job… They’ve both said that they would be willing to come in. Help with your therapy. Apologise, or…”

“-No,” Honey barbed, before looking away, sniffing slightly. It still stung. It still hurt. “I… I get that… I get it’s my fault for maybe, just real teeny-tiny chance here, of being wrong… But… I don’t want to have to deal with that, yet. Okay? I think it still hurts too much.”

Her sniffing descended into tears, and Amy was there throughout that.

Finally, as she recovered, the therapist carried on. “The real drugs might help with that. Do you want to take them now?”

“I…” she began, before pausing. Did she even know what was right or wrong anymore? She didn’t know. Everything felt confusing, and she didn’t feel like the malice of the sheep was there, pushing it on. However crazy it sounded, that made it so much worse. It made her feel naked, scared, vulnerable, as if the knife’s blow could come from anywhere and anywhen.

She sighed, looking down. “I’ll… I’ll try.”

Amy smiled. “I’m proud of you, you know. You’re brave. I think that deserves some real Honey Chomps at the exact right time.”

Honey couldn’t help but let a tiny little smile escaped for a second or two. “So there’s that… Will that ‘cure’ me?”

Amy shifted in front of her, holding her paws. “It’ll help,” she said. “It’s going to be a long road. A real long one. But you’ve taken the first step now, the one all this was about. It was the hardest one, the most important one, and the one I had to push you to take… -You’ll still be in here for a while. I’ll let you in on a little secret. When I brought you in here, I kept wondering if it was the right thing to do, but seeing what you can do when running amok, knowing that there’s a chance of helping you, and getting to know the Honey that’s in there and deserves to get out… I can say that I trust that decision now, fully now. You needed to come in here to get help, and help you’ve got. It’s a long road. But I’ll be beside you, holding your paw, leading you on the right path. Do you like the sound of that?”

Had she been asked any time before all of this, Honey would have laughed it off. Dumb sheep talk, making her more vulnerable. Putting her at risk…

Yet…

Yet things made less sense now, and even those she thought she could trust weren’t as the seemed. By all means, bar her close family, there was no-one she should turn to.

But, looking forwards, Honey felt that she might be able to trust Dr Amy. It was a scary leap into the unknown, yes, but seemingly everything felt that way now.

Was there even anything left to lose? 

She nodded her head.

She wanted to get ‘better’, however long it took.

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**AN: And there we are. Will Zootopia’s favourite raging speciesist eventually be normal enough to return to society? We’ll see, but with Dr Lupuleli on board, I feel that the prognosis is rather good.**

**Honey is an interesting character in the fandom. Part of this stems from her birth in the Zistopia AU’s, where there’s a genuine reason to turn a blind eye to her ramblings, especially if/when they stem from a traumatic event…**

**But in non-collar AU’s, she’s either treated as a useful ally or a quirky friend, when arguably she’s just as bad as a Klansman or a Neo-Nazi…**

**But I don’t think that means she is deserving of all the hate that said people get (and, given the cases of people being talked out of such organisations by people like Daryl Davis, maybe hate isn't always the correct solution there either?) **

**To quote MLK, 'Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.'**

**Regardless, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this fic. Like 'Different' this story was following Honey in the process of accepting that treatment was needed. We will see her again later on in series 1, but if people are interested in snippets of her during the rest of her treatment, just ask. That's what the one-shot collection is for, after all.**

**Like, review and subscribe to the FFoZ collection on A03 or series 1 on fanfic. In addition, if you prefer smaller bi-weekly updates to larger weekly ones (or vice versa), please say so. This fic had some good places to cut it up, others won’t, but I’d like to know if (where possible) I should pursue this format.**

**Regardless, next time we'll be having a nice beefy one-shot, with some fantastic mammals going on a wild goose chase. **

**See you all then, and stay pawsome.**

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The melanistic cheetah sat down on the couch. Though a therapist, he had his own one, as many did. Staring into the void did mean it stared back at you sometimes, and help like this was welcome. He talked and talked and, nodding along, was his therapist. The elderly looking beaver was dressed in a white shirt, blue tie, grey suit and had some thick rimmed glasses on. He had some hair, though it was white, and mainly just went up and back, giving him a wise and comforting look.

“So, I ate the mental breakdown chili…” the cheetah carried on. “And then, I think I transcended. I just saw… a trillion different realities, folding into each other like thin sheets of metal, forming a single blade.”

“Yeah, yeah, the time knife,” his therapist waved off. “We’ve all seen it…”

**Author's Note:**

> .
> 
> Congratulations to Berserker88, who correctly guessed that Honey Badger, not Dawn Bellwether, would be the one being treated. I love writing Honeybun, and she's great fun in my collar stories, but in the real world…
> 
> Yeah, when you think about it, the anti-sheep stuff begins to ring a bit problematic. Especially with the very energetic/ hyper Honey I've always written.
> 
> But what next? Subscribe, follow, favourite and comment to find out. And, if you have spare time, make sure to check out L'EDgendary as well.
> 
> .


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